Sudeten

German
Inferno

Bodies of murdered
Germans in Prag,
June 1945

The hushed-up
tragedy of the
ethnic Germans
in
Czechoslovakia

by Ingomar Pust
Reproduced From The
Superb Web Site

The
Scriptorium

Like the Jews during

the Middle Ages and the NS
regime,
the Sudeten Germans were
forced to wear an identifying
mark
("N" = "Nemec" = "German")
in public.

FOREWORD
As we stand at the threshold
of a new millennium, we look
back on what is perhaps the
most terrible century in the
history of mankind.

A chapter in its own right is

the expulsion of the Sudeten
Germans from their
homeland. Theirs was
ancestral German land which
had been inhabited by their
German forebears for at least
2,000 years (1) and of which
their centuries of hard work
and diligence had wrought a
paradise.
In time, Czechs trickled into
the region, and soon the
invaders tyrannized and
oppressed the good-natured
Sudeten Germans, with the
intent to eradicate them, as
the following accounts clearly
show:
"The district physician of
Graslitz, a district with a
population of 25,000, reports
officially and on his
professional responsibility:
black barley-malt coffee
without milk or cream is the
food that babies are given,
and older children get coffee,
bread and potatoes. The
children are undernourished
and anemic. They have no
clothes. Entire families live in
cramped holes where the
floor is the only place to
sleep.
"In winter there is no coal
with which to heat. Mother,
give me some water, I'm so
hungry, beg the children and the physician (who
clearly feels that this will

perhaps be disbelieved) says

that he can take it on his
oath that this is a direct
quote, and that there was
cause for it. In one family of
six - parents, three children
and a mother-in-law - the
family members literally go
naked. They have neither
stockings nor shoes, nor
shirts. They live on black
coffee for breakfast, soup for
lunch, and there is no supper.
They are slowly but surely
dying out. In the
Adlergebirge mountains the
people supplement their
bread with tree bark, while
the government orders tons
of grain dumped into the
Moldau river to keep the
prices from dropping. A large
part of the population has
been eating cats and dogs."
(2)
And what was the public
response to this?
"Embarrassed silence abroad,
and at home, vile incitement
against all those who
allegedly sullied the Czech
nation's reputation with their
warnings.
"Now it was clear that the
Sudeten Germans were
supposed to be wiped out, for
economic impoverishment
plus social ruination, plus
political hopelessness, plus
national chauvinism on the
part of the Czechs, added up
to the destruction of the

essence of the Sudeten

German ethnic group, despite
all Sudeten German efforts to
ward this off. The systematic
displacement of the Germans
from the employment scene
resulted in a catastrophic
drop in the birth rate." (3)
This is how matters stood in
the Sudetenland when it was
forced to become part of
Czechoslovakia in 1918. And
if Hitler had not restored the
Sudetenland to the German
Reich, the genocide of the
Sudeten Germans would
already have been a fait
accompli even then. Yet
despite all this, the two
ethnic groups, the Czechs
and the Sudeten Germans,
lived peaceably together
during the Third Reich. This
fact casts a highly significant
light on the character of the
Sudeten Germans: after all,
they could have taken
revenge now.
But after the end of this
deplorable war, in 1945, the
tables once again turned to
the disadvantage of the
unfortunate German
population, and the Czechs in
their godlessness were seized
by a blood frenzy that could
not possibly have been any
more gruesome.
They must have been
possessed by the devil: who
else could have guided their

hands as they celebrated

slaughter feasts and
intoxicated themselves with
orgies of murder? Whose
voice was it that ranted from
the lips of their 'men of God':
"You can kill the Germans,
that's no sin!" Were those
God's words? Surely not. I
myself heard such a call to
mass murder as it was being
preached from the pulpits of
the German churches by the
Czech 'servants of God' in
those days.

The Czech President Eduard

Benes, back from exile in
London, incited the alreadycrazed population via the
radio: "Take everything from
the Germans, leave them
only a handkerchief to weep
into!" In Prague Germans
were hung head-down from
the lamp posts and set on fire
as living torches in Benes's
honor. Ever since, the
number of victims has been
cited as 250,000. "Files from
the SBZ/German Democratic
Republic which were not

accessible until 1990 showed

that this figure was actually
much higher and must now
be set at no less than
460,000." (4)
And now, half a century later,
a "New Order" is to be
established. Over the
decades, the Sudeten
Germans' suffering was
mentioned less and less, until
finally the topic was banished
into the darkest corner of
history's broom closet by the
German government itself.
This government now
supports the Czech Republic's
admission to NATO; it
reassures the Czechs that the
Sudeten German expellees
make no claim for restitution,
and the Czechs need not
even renounce their Mr.
Benes's disgraceful decrees.
That is nothing less than
legitimatized genocide, for in
just one more generation
there will be no more
Sudeten Germans - the
survivors have become
assimilated by the rest of the
German population. At the
same time the Czechs grow
ever more brazen and even
demand "restitution" from the
Germans! For what, is
beyond me. As though it
were not enough that they
stole the land and the
people's wealth - goods of
inestimable value - they let
this former gem of a region
go to rack and ruin and even

want to be paid for it!

On this putrefaction, a "New
Order" is now to be built; on
a foundation of unatoned-for
crimes, festering wounds,
and the bitterness of the
unfairly treated! And this is
supposed to end well? I doubt
it will.

PROLOGUE
Probably all civilized nations
on earth agree on one point:
man, the most intelligent
being in Creation, bears sole
responsibility for everything
that happens on our planet with the exception of such
acts of nature, of course, as
are beyond human influence.
And so our incarnation - or
anthropogenesis, if the
reader prefers - brought with
it an unconditional cosmic
morality that progressed to
cultural levels whose degree
and promise varied with the
races and tribes that sprang
up in the course of mankind's
development. While some
pursued their genetic impetus
to the pinnacle, others have
remained in spiritual
narrowness and intellectual
inadequacy, at a stone-age
level to this day. Others
again, however - particularly
tribes and peoples that
developed in a tradition of
warlike violence - have

retained incomprehensible
sadism, inhuman cruelty as
indestructible and
unfortunate characteristics.
In the sixth century A.D. the
Czechs advanced into Central
Europe in the footsteps of the
Awars, without at first
forming a unified tribe or
nation. Even today the
physical appearance of many
Czechs reveals their genetic
mixing with the Awars. But
the bestialities engaged in by
their oppressors is another
factor of which they were
never able to rid themselves
completely. Even once they
had begun to develop their
own ethnicity they continued
to manifest these inherited
vices. Particularly since the
Hussite wars of the 15th
century, and right to the
present day, they have
tended towards open or
(more often) clandestine
cloak-and-dagger activity. Yet
they have their German
neighbors alone to thank for
anything and everything they
can boast in the line of
culture and civilization.
Since achieving ethnic unity
this nation has fluctuated
between the extremes of
obsequious servility and hatefilled presumptuousness. It
may be that this nation,
wedged as it was right into
the living space of the
Germans, found itself backed

into a moral corner where its

baser instincts gained the
upper hand. Virtually
paralyzed by the unequaled
creative genius of their larger
German neighbor, the
ambitious Czechs developed
those complexes which, when
additionally fueled by envy
and resentment, have
resulted in their well-known
explosive outbursts. And this
soul-deep unease is the
driving force behind their
boundless chauvinism. Only
in this way can their most
regrettable characteristic their occasional blood frenzy
- be explained.
Throughout the many
centuries that the Germans
coexisted with the Czechs in
Bohemia and Moravia there
was not one single case of a
German having killed a Czech
out of hatred or revenge. In
contrast, what the following
chapters describe can hardly
be surpassed in its bestiality,
or in its death toll of 241,000
German lives!
This would truly be a subject
fit for television - yet all the
world's media have studiously
ignored it for more than 50
years now, for indeed these
mind-boggling atrocities were
followed up with what may
justly be called the crime of
the century: the
comprehensive expulsion of
the entire Sudeten German

ethnic group from their

homeland which they had
settled and made arable
seven and even more
centuries earlier. And this
global crime was part and
parcel of the Allied crusade
for "Christianity and
humanitarianism"!

PREFACE
This book documents the
realization that the outburst
of sadism in May 1945 in
Czechoslovakia was an
unparalleled world record of
torture and murder that
claimed the lives of half a
million Germans (241,000
civilians and 250,000
soldiers).
Sadism manifest itself both in
individuals and in entire
cultures. The German social
psychologist Erich Fromm has
concluded that collective
sadism may often be found in
frustrated social strata that
suffer from a sense of
powerlessness.
The Hussites roasted their
prisoners in pitch-covered
barrels. Centuries later, the
Czechs of May 1945 burned
wounded Germans to death
as living torches, hung upside
down over blazing fires.

A curious duplication.

In the time of the witchhunts, women were

beheaded or burned for
allegedly having slept with
the Devil. The imaginary devil
of those days has become
reality in the form of the
serial killers of our time; the
victims of the witch-hunts
were paralleled in May 1945
in Czechoslovakia by innocent
German women.
It is understandable that
posterity wants nothing to do
with crimes it did not commit.
But then it can also not
presume to freeload off the
murderers' blood-spattered
loot. The Czechs of today
have been made the
receivers of goods gained
through robbery and murder
on a gigantic scale. The gift
their forefathers left them is
a two-edged sword. Anyone
who cannot acknowledge
their guilt will never be rid of
it.
In spring of 1994 the Neue
Kronenzeitung, Austria's
largest daily paper, brought a
series of exposs titled
"Schreie aus der Hlle
ungehrt" - Cries From Hell,
Unheard. This book continues
that series with further,
detailed accounts. May it help
to fill in the historical gap
that has been so well hidden
for more than half a century.
The author is especially

grateful to Alexander Hoyer,

Herwig Griehsler and
Maximilian Czesany for their
invaluable help.
Ingomar Pust, Engineer
Notes
(1) Alois Bernt, Die
Germanen und Slawen in
Bhmen und Mhren. Spuren
frher Geschichte im
Herzland Europas, Tbingen:
Grabert, 1989, pp. 15-16,
21; Emil Franzel,
Sudetendeutsche Geschichte,
Augsburg: Bechtermnz,
1997, p. 16; Armin E. Hepp,
Vlker und Stmme in
Deutschland. Von der
Steinzeit zum Mittelalter,
Tbingen: Grabert, 1979, p.
196; Hans Krebs and Emil
Lehmann, Sudetendeutsche
Landeskunde, Kiel: Arndt,
1992, maps p. 46; Erich
Linnenkohl, Die Wenden und
die "Slawen" genannten
Vlker. Sprachliche
Widerlegung der These von
den "slawischen Vlkern",
Frankfurt/M.: R. G. Fischer,
1995, p. 9, 12; Hans Riehl,
Die Vlkerwanderung. Der
lngste Marsch der
Weltgeschichte, Munich: W.
Ludwig, 1988, map pp.
160ff.; Malcolm Todd, The
Early Germans,
Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell,
1992/95, p. 6 fig. 1. ...back...
(2) Reinhard Pozorny, Wir

suchten die Freiheit,

Vlotho/Weser: Verlag fr
Volkstum und
Zeitgeschichtsforschung,
1978, p. 179. ...back...
(3) ebenda, S. 174. ...back...
(4) Fritz Peter Habel, Eine
politische Legende, Munich:
Langen Mller, 1996, p. 118.

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE
The Federal Convention of
Sudeten Germans has offered
a prize for the best movie
script written to portray the
horrors of the expulsion. But
will it be possible? The
historical records exist: a
grisly documentation, the
mere reading of which is
enough to cause nausea.
But nevertheless it will hardly
be possible to turn it into a
movie true to life. It might be
possible to reconstruct death
marches and mass
executions, to show bodies
with their noses, ears and
private parts cut off, wounded
being thrown out of windows,
people being roasted headdown over open fires. It
might be possible to portray
the naked women, on their
knees being whipped through
the streets of Prague strewn
with glass shards. It might be
possible to film the thousands
of women that were thrown

into the rivers Moldau and

Elbe together with their
children and baby carriages
and then raked with machine
gun fire. It might be possible
to use dummy dolls to
represent the heads of the
dead mothers and babies still
sticking out of the filth of the
camp latrines where they had
been thrown, until they were
finally covered over by the
excrement of their fellowsufferers. It might even be
possible to show bloody
bundles of tortured people on
the ground being forced to
swallow human excrement,
and gags covered in such
excrement being forced into
their mouths.
But who would be able to
recreate the screams of the
Germans whose torn bodies
were rubbed with
hydrochloric acid, who were
beaten until their private
parts were reduced to bloody
lumps? Who is to recreate the
screams of the women,
whipped bloody, who were
shoved naked, rear down,
onto SS daggers? Hundreds
of thousands went through
this hell of torture before
they were beaten to death or
shot. Specifically: 241,000.
The number of soldiers who
died in the course of this
outburst of sadism is
probably no less.

In the insane explosion of

sadism, German privates
were strung up from lamp
posts.
This fate struck primarily the
wounded who were
recovering
in Prague hospitals and were
able to go out already.

And that was only part of the

gigantic massacre in the East
and Southeast.
In his comprehensive and
dispassionate work Deutscher
Exodus (Seewald Verlag),
Gerhard Ziemer writes:
"According to a very
painstaking calculation of the
Federal Statistical Office in
Wiesbaden, the German
civilian population lost
2,280,000 members to flight,
expulsion and deportation.
These people were shot or

beaten to death or died of

hunger and exhaustion in the
labor camps of the
deportation process in the
East."
Ziemer states:
"The number of victims of the
expulsion never impacted on
public awareness in the East
or West. Even in Germany
only a small minority is aware
of it. It has not become a
topic for journalism and the
mass media like the victims
of Fascism and the
persecution of the Jews
have."
The statistics and
documentation of these
monstrosities have remained
unknown. Official German
authorities do not mention or
publicize them even when
Eastern or Southeastern
countries make demands for
restitution.
It would be easy to say that
the events in the East and
Southeast were a just and
fair response to the previous
National Socialist misdeeds.
But were the people in
Prague, Warsaw and Belgrade
called to avenge the Jewish
fate on innocent Germans?
Was it right to speak of
"liberation" and then to
eradicate entire population
groups? To expel 15 million

people from their homes?

People utterly ignorant of
history try to excuse that
eruption of hatred with the
suppression of Czech
sovereignty. But if that were
a viable argument, then the
Sudeten Germans could well
also have massacred the
Czechs in 1938; they had
been deprived of their own
sovereignty and their right to
self-determination for not
seven, but 20 years.
Nevertheless they did the
Czechs no harm whatsoever
in 1938.
If suppression of sovereignty
were really to justify bestial
genocide, then the South
Tyroleans as well would have
the moral "right" to slit their
Italian masters' throats. For
some 60 years now they too
have been deprived of their
sovereignty and their right to
self-determination.

SELF-DETERMINATION
DROWNED IN BLOOD
The tragedy of the Sudeten
Germans began 60 years
ago, with the collapse of the
multinational AustroHungarian Monarchy. Millions
of people were imbued with
the desire for selfdetermination, which the
American President had led

them to believe was their

right.

The Republic of Austria was

born in the throes of political
unrest. 6 million Czechs
forced 3.3 million Sudeten
Germans, 2 million Slovaks
and 700,000 Hungarians into
their ethnic dungeon.
And thus it began...
When the Monarchy collapsed
and the constituent parts
were struggling for a new
formation, the German local
government officials and
mayors of the Sudetenland
already took their oaths of
office in allegiance to the
Republic of Austria. In the
last days of October 1918 the
Sudeten German
parliamentary representatives
had already constituted the
provinces of "Sudetenland"
and "German Bohemia" and
had annexed these directly to
Austria.
In the days that followed,
however, Czech troops in
Austrian uniforms occupied

the defenseless and totally

demilitarized Sudetenland,
despite vigorous protests by
the entire German
population. Local resistance which sprung up despite the
express wishes of the
command posts of the
People's Army, stationed in
Vienna, and the newly formed
Sudeten German provincial
government - achieved only
small-scale successes and
could not prevent the course
of things to come. The
occupation was accompanied
by hostage-taking and
brutally violent measures;
local resistance was even
quashed with artillery fire,
arbitrary censorship was
inflicted on the press, district
councils were dissolved, and
the entire Austrian state
property was "expropriated".
On March 4, 1919, the
Austrian National Assembly
solemnly convened its first
session in Vienna. Czech
troops forcibly prevented the
participation of Sudeten
German representatives.
In large-scale demonstrations
the public now demanded
freedom and democracy, and
that right to selfdetermination which the
Allies had declared to be one
of their own aims of war. The
Sudeten Germans
congregated at these
proclamations unarmed,

informed by their faith in

their right. But then the
incomprehensible happened.
On Czech orders, Czechs in
uniform shot at those
gathered together. The
crashing of hand grenades
accompanied the salvos of
gunfire and the screams of
those mortally wounded - 54
dead and hundreds of injured
remained lying in the streets.
Among the places where this
happened were Arnau,
Aussig, Eger, Kaaden, Mies,
Karlsbad, Sternberg and
Freudenthal. The 54 dead
included 20 women and girls,
an 80-year-old man, one
youth of 16, one of 13 and
one only eleven years old!
This bloody event that ought
to have shaken the world to
its foundations remained
without echo.
Later, to justify the use of
armed force, it was claimed
that the Czech executive
powers had acted in sudden,
nervous panic. They had not;
they had acted on an order
given by the Prague Ministry
of the Interior, instructing
them to prevent the
proclamations with force of
arms. That explains the fact
that the shooting of
participants in these
demonstrations took place
everywhere at almost exactly
the same time.
In this way, demonstrations

that might have attracted

world attention were to be
thwarted once and for all.
Any attempt at exercising the
right to self-determination
drew immediate gunfire. After
March 4, another 53 Germans
fell victim to Czech bullets.
More than 2,000 gravely
wounded were taken to
hospitals. That was the
beginning of the sham
democracy along the Moldau
River ("Vltava"). The cries for
self-determination had been
drowned in blood.

The Dead of March 4,

1919
In the following we record the
names of the Sudeten
Germans murdered on March
4, 1919 - shot by Czech
officers for their belief in their
right to self-determination.
Killed on March 4, 1919:
Age
Where
-----------------------------Anna Sachs, brewery
master's wife
41
Arnau
Aloisia Baudisch,
laborer
16
Arnau
Franz Jarsch, butcher
60
Aussig
Josef Christl, student
18
Eger
Grete Reinl, student
18
Eger

Franz Schneider,
shoemaker
52
Kaaden
Josef Wolf, day
laborer
51
Kaaden
Erich Benesch, master
spinner
30
Kaaden
Andreas Benedikt,
baker
46
Kaaden
Franziska Passler, tanner's
wife
46
Kaaden
Anna Rott, plumber's
wife
41
Kaaden
Marie Ziener, seamstress
18
Kaaden
Arianne Sturm,
seamstress
24
Kaaden
Karl Tauber, student
14
Kaaden
Ludmila Doleschal,
seamstress
26
Kaaden
Leopoldine Meder,
dressmaker
28
Kaaden
Karl Lochschmid,
student
11
Kaaden
Paula Schmiedl,
student
15
Kaaden
Wilhelm Figert, room
painter
22
Kaaden
Oskar Meier,
apprentice
16
Kaaden
Julie Schindler, servant
girl
17
Kaaden

Berta Meier,
seamstress
40
Kaaden
Aloisia Weber, office assistant
20
Kaaden
Marie Stckl, laborer
23
Kaaden
Ferdinand Kumpe, day
laborer
15
Kaaden
Hugo Nittner, electrician
18
Kaaden
Marie Loos,
housewife
54
Kaaden
Kath. Tschammerhhl,
laborer
49
Kaaden
Theodor Romig,
student
17
Kaaden
Paul Pessl, student
18
Kaaden
Johann Luft,
railwayman
28
Mies
Rosa Heller, private
24
Mies
Alfred Hahn,
accountant
19
Karlsbad
Ferdinand Schuhmann,
laborer
56
Karlsbad
Josef Stck, laborer
44
Karlsbad
Michael Fischer, laborer
37
Karlsbad
Wenzel Wagner,
bricklayer
30
Karlsbad
Wilhelm Reingold,
merchant
52
Karlsbad

Josefa Bolek, laborer

37
Sternberg
Hermine Kirsch, laborer
37
Sternberg
Amlia Neckel, laborer
38
Sternberg
Otto Faulhammer,
locksmith
18
Sternberg
Matthias Kaindl,
apprentice
16
Sternberg
Alois Lnger,
coachman
42
Sternberg
Rudolf Lehr, roofer
16
Sternberg
Franz Prosser, turner's
assistant
28
Sternberg
Ferdinand Pudek,
laborer
56
Sternberg
Ed. Sedlatschek, civil
servant
46
Sternberg
Josef Simak, laborer
48
Sternberg
Emil Schreiber,
typesetter
18
Sternberg
Richard Tschauner,
tailor
26
Sternberg
Josef Laser, retired
80
Sternberg
Franz Meier, baker
36
Sternberg
Bruno Schindler,
laborer
68
Sternberg
Among the dead of March 4
were 20 women and girls.

There was one 80-year-old,

but also 16 persons aged 19
or younger, two of them were
only 14, one was 13 and one
as young as 11!
In the time from 1918 to
1924 another 63 Sudeten
Germans lost their lives in
this way. They came from
Wiesa-Oberleutensdorf,
Gastdorf near Leitmeritz,
Brx, Moravian Trbau,
Kaplitz, Znaim, Pressburg,
Freudenthal, Arnau, Oblas
near Znaim, Pilsen, Pohrlitz in
South Moravia, Leitmeritz,
Iglau, Zuckmantel, Asch,
Aussig and Graslitz.

THE KARLSBAD PROGRAM

Excerpts from Professor Dr.
Berthold Rubin's book _War
Deutschland allein schuld:
Der Weg zum Zweiten
Weltkrieg_. Rubin was
historiographer at the
University of Cologne.
Page 112: Meanwhile, the
"Sudeten German Party"
continues to grow. The
Prague government's policy
of suppression has as its
result a consolidation of the
Sudeten Germans, who are
firmly resolved to fend off the
threats to their ethnic group.
At the community elections
on April 22, 1938, the Party
wins 91.44% of all German
votes. Two days later, on April

24, the historic Party

Convention takes place in
Karlsbad, and Konrad Henlein
announces his famous Eight
Points.
"If matters in the
Czechoslovak state are to
progress peacefully, then it is
the conviction of the Sudeten
Germans that the following
state and judicial order is
necessary:
Full equality of rights and
status with the Czech people.
1. Acknowledgment of the
Sudeten German ethnic
group as legal entity to
maintain this status of
equality within the state.
2. Definition and
acknowledgment of the
German settlement area.
3. Development of a German
self-administration in the
German settlement area,
relevant to all aspects of
public life insofar as they
pertain to interests and
concerns of the German
ethnic group.
4. Institution of legal
measures for the protection
of those citizens living outside
the closed settlement area of
their ethnic group.
5. Elimination of the
injustices inflicted on the
Sudeten Germans since
1918, and rectification of the
harm and damage already
sustained through these

injustices.
6. Acknowledgment and
implementation of this matter
of principle: German civil
servants for the German
areas.
7. Full freedom to
acknowledge and maintain
our German ethnicity and our
German world view."
In his commentary on these
Eight Points Henlein pointed
out at the Conference that
Czechoslovakia's obligations
under international law
followed from President
Wilson's well-known 14
Points, from the memoranda
of the Czech peace delegation
to the Peace Conference, and
from Dr. Benes's note of May
20, 1919, as well as from the
Peace Conference's
statements in this regard,
and from the national treaty
of St. Germain of September
10, 1919.
It is remarkable that neither
Henlein's Karlsbad address
nor any of the Eight Points
make any mention of the
Sudetenland's wishing to
break away from the
Czechoslovak state formation.
In other words, the Sudeten
Germans, despite all
oppression, were still
resolved at this point to
remain part of this state.
Ought the Czech state not to
have immediately seized this
opportunity which the

German minority of threeand-and-a-half million offered

it at the last minute? The
Czech leadership would have
been well advised to do so,
and accepting Henlein's Eight
Points would not have hurt
them any. Added to this is
the fact that, only a few
weeks later, English and
French delegations in Prague
urged emphatically that the
Czech state should
accommodate the wishes of
the German ethnic group. In
this context it bears
mentioning that the British
Ambassador in Berlin at that
time, Sir Henderson,
suggests in his book Failure
of a Mission (well worth
reading) that the Prague
government's immediate
acceptance of most of the
Karlsbad Program would have
been quite possible. As Erich
Kordt(1) remarked: "There
can be no doubt that, by
refusing the Karlsbad
Program, the Czechoslovak
government played right into
Hitler's hands." Thanks to the
course set by Prague, the
return of the Sudeten
Germans to the German
Reich became inevitable.
Initially, Hitler exercised
restraint in the Sudeten
Question. On March 29, in
other words before the
Karlsbad Party Convention,
Henlein met with Karl
Hermann Frank, Dr. Kuenzel

and Dr. Kreissl for discussions

in the Foreign Office in Berlin.
The minutes of this
discussion (Pol. I 789g (IV)
Secret) contain the following
passage:
"It is up to the Sudeten
German Party to make those
demands of the Czechoslovak
government whose fulfillment
it considers necessary to
achieve the freedoms it
wishes. The Reich Minister
(Ribbentrop) stated that it
could not be up to the Reich
government to give Konrad
Henlein, the leader of the
Sudeten Germans - expressly
recognized, and reconfirmed
as such by the Fnhrer detailed suggestions as to
which demands might be
made of the Czechoslovak
government. It is necessary
to draw up a best-case
program whose ultimate goal
is to achieve full freedom for
the Sudeten Germans... The
government of the Reich
must decline to appear to the
government at Prague, or to
London or Paris, as
pacemaker or representative
of the Sudeten German
demands. It goes without
saying that in the course of
the coming discussions with
the Czechoslovak government
the Sudeten Germans are
fully in Konrad Henlein's
hands, that peace and
discipline must be
maintained, and that rash

acts are to be avoided...

"The task of the German
envoy in Prague would be to
act not so much in an official
capacity as in private
discussions with the
Czechoslovak statesmen, to
support the demands of the
Sudeten German Party as
reasonable, without exerting
any direct influence on the
extent of these demands. The
discussion then turned to the
expediency of an alliance
between the Sudeten German
Party and the other minorities
in Czechoslovakia, especially
the Slovaks. The Reich
Minister decided that the
Party must be free to
maintain a loose association
with other minority groups
whose parallel action might
be advantageous."
This protocol is interesting
and historically very
significant because it shows
that in spring of 1938, shortly
after the annexation of
Austria, Hitler had no
intention of uniting the
Sudetenland with the Reich,
but rather of leaving it in the
Czechoslovak state union albeit with the grant of farreaching autonomy in the
spirit of the Karlsbad
Program. This again goes to
show how very different
these events would have
turned out if the
Czechoslovak government

had been more reasonable

and shown more of a
statesmanlike sense of
responsibility, and had
accepted the Karlsbad
Program, which left the
Czechoslovak state wholly
inviolate.

MUNICH AGREEMENT PROTECTORATE

The 1938 annexation of the
Sudeten German regions to
the German Reich proper,
which took place with the
participation of France and
England, was thus no more
than the putting-right of
injustices dating from 1918.
Regions that had been
German for almost a
millennium were included in a
larger German sphere. This
boundary region - the later
Protectorate boundary corresponded precisely with
the linguistic boundary
between German and Czech,
and the votes of 98.9% of the
Sudeten Germans confirmed
this at the plebiscite of
December 4, 1938.
Not a hair of a single Czech's
head was harmed in the
process. In contrast to the
expulsion of the Sudeten
Germans in 1945, there were
also no forcible evictions.
Every Czech was free to claim
his right to live wherever he

pleased.
In his book War Deutschland
allein schuld? (Munich: DSZVerlag, 1987), Prof. Dr.
Berthold Rubin wrote about
the Munich Agreement and its
consequences:
"After the Agreement has
been signed by the four
statesmen, England and
France, in a rider clause,
assume responsibility towards
Czechoslovakia to guarantee
her new borders, while
Germany and Italy, in
another rider, give the same
guarantees, to take effect as
soon as the matters of the
Polish, Hungarian, Slovak,
Carpatho-Ukrainian and
Ruthenian minorities in the
remainder state are settled."
The Czechoslovak
government by no means
carried out its own
obligations, and half a year
later Slovakia suffered gross
interference from the central
government at Prague, and
the forcible dismissal of four
Ministers on March 9, 1939 the climax of the CzechSlovak crisis.
On page 153 of the
aforementioned book we
learn of Hitler's September
26, 1938 speech in the Berlin
Sportpalast, and his
admonition to the central
government at Prague to find

a prompt and peaceful

solution to Czechoslovakia's
entire minority issue:
"... and further, I have
assured him [Chamberlain]
that in the very instant when
Czechoslovakia solves its
problems - that is, when
Czechoslovakia has dealt with
its minorities, and peacefully
so, not by oppression - in
that instant I will lose all
interest in the Czech state
and we will guarantee its
borders. We don't want any
Czechs, but we do want a
full, satisfactory and final
settlement of the minority
question, no uneasy
compromises, and absolutely
no constant trouble spot at
the heart of Europe!"
But the Czech government let
this precious time go by
unused, and could not be
bothered to solve this grave
minority problem, least of all
as quickly as possible.
After Slovak President Josef
Tiso called on Hitler on March
13, 1939 to request his aid
and support in achieving
independence for Slovakia,
the Slovak Parliament,
convened by Tiso and Dr.
Durssansky, unanimously
voted for independence from
Prague on March 14, 1939.
With that, the Czech republic
fell apart and all the
guarantees given by England

and France lapsed, as did

those promised by Germany
and Italy for after the
resolution of the minority
problems.
Just as is the case with
regard to Slovak President
Tiso, it is also alleged that it
was Hitler who "ordered" the
March 14, 1939 visit from the
then Czech President Emil
Hacha. Secretary of State
Otto Meissner, who was
present at that discussion,
stated:"The initiative for
Hacha's and his Foreign
Minister Chvalkovsky's trip to
Berlin came strictly from the
Czech side." What is
particularly significant about
Meissner's report is that
Hacha's and Chvalkovsky's
trip to Berlin followed an
explicit decision by the
Cabinet when he elected, on
the evening of March 13,
1939, to request a personal
discussion of the political
situation via the German
charg d'affaires (p. 203). The
Sudeten German SocialDemocratic Representative
Wenzel Jaksch commented
similarly in his book Europas
Weg nach Potsdam: "... in
view of the ever-worsening
situation on March 14, 1939,
Hacha felt that it was
necessary to request that
discussion with Hitler."
England acknowledged
Slovakia's separation from

the Czech whole as a

voluntary act of the Slovak
people's representatives. This
disproves the false claims of
the foreign press, that Tiso
had allegedly been "ordered"
to Berlin on March 12, 1939
and that Slovakia had then
declared independence
"under duress" from Hitler.
That same world that vented
such outrage at the inclusion
of seven million Czechs in the
German Reich of more than
18 million had previously, and
for a span of 20 years, not
only tolerated the
enslavement of eight million
non-Czechs by seven million
Czechs in the ethnic dungeon
of "Czechoslovakia", but also
bore the blame for the
creation of this state in the
first place.

Monument to the right to

self-determination, Gmunden
(Austria), erected in 1931,
destroyed in 1945; created
by Prof. Ludwig Galasek. The

inscription on the front reads:

"For the right to selfdetermination. Erected in
remembrance of our
homeland, and dedicated to
the city of Gmunden by the
Sudeten German
Heimatbund, Whitsun, 1931."

NO CZECHS WERE
EXPELLED IN 1938

Excerpt from: Dr. Heinrich

Wendig, Richtigstellungen zur
Zeitgeschichte, issue 5, pub.
Institut fnr deutsche
Zeitgeschichte, Tnbingen:
Grabert, 1993.

No Czechs were expelled

in 1938
The expulsion of the Sudeten
Germans from their
homeland after 1945 is
rationalized by, among other
things, the mendacious claim
that following the Munich
Agreement of September 28,
1938, Czechs were "expelled"
from the Sudetenland, which
was then annexed by the
German Reich. But there was
never any such expulsion,
and particularly not in the
time from 1938 to 1945.
The fact is that in late 1918,
aside from the German
minority, some 160,000
Czechs lived in those regions
of Czechoslovakia that would
later be affected by the
Munich Agreement; in May

1939, however, official

statistics place their number
at approximately 320,000,
i.e. fully twice as many. They
had come to these regions
and also to purely German
towns and villages as officials
or teachers, for example.
Their purpose was to
"Czechify" these regions - to
counteract their German
character and to make them
Czech.
After the Sudetenland's
annexation many of these
immigrants moved back into
their Czech homeland, the
future Protectorate. But not
one of them was expelled. A
number of dissidents German functionaries and
members of the German
Social-Democratic Party - also
left the once-again-German
regions because they did not
wish to live under National
Socialist rule. Many of them
then emigrated via
Czechoslovakia to the West.
They too were not expelled,
but left voluntarily.
In a March 17, 1992 letter to
the editor of the Prague daily
paper Lidove Noviny,
Stanislav Aust, a witness to
those times, responded to an
editorial in this paper in
which "expulsions in 1938"
had been mentioned: "As
eyewitness, I must reject the
lies that were contained in
the article titled 'Munich and

the Legal Order'. Our family

was very active against
Henlein, and we were not
forcibly expelled; we fled out
of fear of potential
persecution. In
Czechoslovakia proper we
were registered as refugees,
not as expellees. Those that
did not choose to leave did
not have to. Many in
Trautenau weathered the
occupation. Our family's
house remained our
possession, and the German
tenant continued to pay his
rent regularly. It was June
1945 before the house was
taken from us, by a member
of the Revolutionary Guard,
and my parents had to go to
great trouble to get the house
back. The claim that the
property of Germans who had
remained loyal to the
Republic was not confiscated
(in 1945) is more than
ridiculous." (From the
German translation in
Deutscher Ost-Dienst, no. 12
of March 27, 1992.)
Notes
(1)Diplomat in the Foreign
Office since 1928; 1936, First
Diplomatic Secretary to
Ribbentrop in London; 19381941, Chief of the Ministerial
Office in the Berlin Foreign
Office. At the Nuremberg
Tribunal he admitted having
stood in active opposition to
the National Socialist regime

since as early as 1936.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
PROTECTORATE
In the early morning hours of
March 15, 1939, the German
troops moved into
Czechoslovakia. There were
no incidents of violence
whatsoever, neither with the
Czech army nor with the
civilian population. The
Czechs received the German
soldiers in silence, but
without resistance, while the
German inhabitants in
Prague, Brnn and other
cities with a sizable German
minority greeted their fellowcountrymen with cheers of
joy. The next day, on March
16, 1939, the "Decree
Regarding the BohemianMoravian Region's Status
Under National Law" was
proclaimed.
The degree of freedom and
independent existence which
the German Reich allowed the
Czechs in the Protectorate
becomes evident from "Neues
Staatsrecht II", issue 13/2,
by Dr. W. Stuskart and Rolf
Schiedermair, respectively the
Secretary of State and the
Assistant Department Head in
the Reich Ministry of the
Interior, on p. 90 of the 19th
edition published by Verlag
Kohlhammer in Leipzig in
1944:

Administration of the

Protectorate.
It is part of the National
Socialist view of people,
ethnicity and race, to respect
the ethnicity of foreign
peoples. From this view,
which is fundamentally
different from that of the
ruling power in former
Czechoslovakia, it follows that
the Reich guarantees the
Czech people the autonomous
development of their national
life in accordance with their
own unique nature.
1. The Protectorate is
autonomous and administers
itself. Within the framework
of the sovereign jurisdiction
to which the Protectorate is
entitled, it exercises its
autonomy in accordance with
the political, military and
economic interests of the
Reich (Article 3):
i. Besides the head of state,
the Protectorate has its own
government, and other
branches and divisions to
exercise its sovereign rights.
It is also up to the members
of the Protectorate to
determine their form of
government. The Czech
people may create for
themselves the form of
government which best suits
their national character.
ii. The Protectorate has its

own flag.
iii. The autonomous
administration is carried out
via the Protectorate's own
authorities, with their own
officials. These officials are
not Reich officials: they are
not sworn in with an oath of
allegiance to the Fhrer.
iv. The Protectorate has its
own legal system.
v. The Protectorate may
muster its own units (7,000
men) to maintain internal
security and order."
In essence, what the Czechs
in the Protectorate were
legally guaranteed was
exactly those rights which the
leader of the Sudeten
Germans, Konrad Henlein,
had requested in his wellknown Eight Points on April
24, 1938 in the 44-member
Parliament at Prague, but had
never been granted.

LIDICE

All the world likes to publicize

and draw attention to this
major German crime of the
destruction of the Czech
village of Lidice near Kladno.
Erich Kern, author of the
book Deutschland am
Abgrund, comments as
follows (p. 160):
SS-Obergruppenfhrer

Heydrich
"On September 22, 1941, SSObergruppenfhrer Reinhard
Heydrich, the deputy Reich
Protector of Bohemia and
Moravia, had come to Prague.
In an astonishingly short time
he had won the Czech
workers' and peasants' trust,
and strove systematically for
a complete reconciliation
between the German and the
Czech peoples."
In his account of the
assassination of Reinhard
Heydrich, British historian
Alan Burgess - who is
otherwise exceedingly proCzech - describes the
situation as follows:
"The Western powers could
no longer expect that
resistance would continue.
With each passing day
Czechoslovakia slipped
further into the Nazi camp...
The Czech secret service saw
only one means left to it to
interrupt the course of events
and to show the world that
Czechoslovakia was again on
the side of the Allies. While
the sham regime bowed and
scraped before the Nazis and
accepted their caresses, as it
were, partisan paratroopers
were to drop unnoticed from
the sky and to abruptly chop
off the caressing hand. Such
an incredible provocation
would show the Germans that

they were dealing with a

defensible people who were
far from defeated."

Heydrich had to be killed.

Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik
were exiled Czechs who had
fled to England. They had
been trained as paratroopers,
for which reason they were
chosen to carry out the
assassination of Heydrich in
the pre-noon hours of May
27, 1942 in Prague.
A general state of emergency
was declared that same day,
and a curfew was imposed for
the hours from 9:00 pm to
6:00 am.
Nine days after the attack,
Heydrich succumbed to the
injuries he had suffered from
the hand grenade shrapnel.
The officially recorded cause
of death: anthrax

bacteria???!
Lidice was chosen to be made
an example of, even though
neither Kubis nor Gabcik had
gone into hiding there. Some
of their accomplices came
from Lidice, but had had
nothing to do with the
assassination.
In the early morning of June
10, 1942, 30 Czech
gendarmes of the Prague
police, acting on German
orders, executed 174 men
aged 16 years and up. The
women and children were
sent to the concentration
camps of Ravensbrck and
Auschwitz. In this context it
is alleged time and again that
Lidice was destroyed by the
Waffen-SS. That is false. In
fact, not so much as a single
unit of the Waffen-SS was
used against Lidice! (Kern,
Deutschland am Abgrund, p.
165.)

WENZEL JAKSCH'S
APPEAL TO BENES

In June 22, 1942, after plans

for the expulsion of the
Sudeten Germans had
become known, Wenzel
Jaksch (a Sudeten German
Social Democrat in exile)
wrote the following letter to
Dr. Edward Benes, the Czech
President in exile in London:
"Dear Mr. President!

For reasons I hardly need

spell out, I have waited until
this day to convey our
resolutions of June 7, 1942.
Let me assure you that the
recent terrible events in our
homeland have greatly
dismayed us as well. Nothing
has changed in our feelings of
friendship towards the Czech
people, and we mourn their
casualties as though they
were our own. For this reason
I ask you, Mr. President, to
please take note of our
protest, a transcript of which
is enclosed. It was announced
in a radio broadcast and is
surely also made in the name
of our best comrades, who
have been the target of harsh
persecution since October 1,
1938.
However, grave
circumstances compel me to
try with this letter to achieve
a political clarification which
can be postponed no longer.
Our political resolution
records the utterly negative
results of all discussions held
to date.
It expresses our
representatives' profound
embitterment at the kind of
treatment our movement has
experienced since Munich.
The degree of dismay which
the current propaganda for a
mass transfer of the Sudeten
Germans has called forth in
our ranks is difficult to

describe, Mr. President.

Naturally such measures
would be directed at the
population of entire regions,
and thus would also affect
circles that held out heroically
in the conflict with Nazi
Fascism both before and after
the decision at Munich.
Our people are well
acquainted with struggle and
hardship and they have not
failed to notice the difference
between the English proposal
of punishment of the guilty,
and the intent of Czech policy
to achieve gains in national
power far beyond any
settlement of affairs with the
Nazi criminals. Given the
deep roots which our working
population has in their
homeland, it is clear that the
evacuation of entire regions
could be arranged only with
brute force and against the
unanimous resistance of all
political forces that will be
present after the collapse of
Nazi rule.
Dear Mr. President! It is with
a heavy heart that I must
inform you of the full extent
of our concerns. The sooner
this is made clear, the better:
the program of population
transfer will be a dangerous
cue for the outbreak of a civil
war along the Bohemian and
Moravian linguistic border.
There are other ways to
atone for the Nazi crimes.

There will be a reckoning-up

in the Sudeten region as well
- our dead, and the many
thousands of our best men
who survived the horrors of
the concentration camps,
vouch for that. Settling the
account with the Nazis will
offer no grounds for the
inevitably indiscriminate
expulsion of the population of
entire border regions. A
population transfer would be
an indiscriminate revenge,
and I wish to put this to you
quite openly, Mr. President:
that would mean the
destruction of any and all
foundations for democratic
cooperation for a generation
to come.
In light of these dangers it is
not an easy decision for us to
abandon the moral legacy of
a long period of national
cooperation.
Many things may be forgotten
today, but the annals of
history show that a million
Germans stood by the Czech
people in the fateful years of
1937-38.
The fact that the Catholics
and the Landbund Party
capitulated after the collapse
of Austria warrants a more
lenient judgement if one
considers how demoralizing
the attitude of large Czech
parties was to the German
population. The heroism of

our working people has made

up for many of the
weaknesses manifested in
other sectors of the activist
camp. Our population can
face the Czech people with
the clearest conscience in the
world. Their casualties, and
the activities they continue to
pursue despite constant
persecution, are points in
their favor which cannot be
ignored in drawing up the
final account of the battle
against Hitlerism. Permit me,
Mr. President, to summarize
these thoughts into a single
argument:
We believe we may take
some of the credit for the
Czech democracy having
fallen heroically.
In his most recent book, Dr.
Hozda has admitted that as
early as autumn 1937 he had
offered Henlein the right to
hold community council
elections and thus
relinquished the entire selfadministration of our border
regions to him. If our party
had not decided to participate
in local elections anyhow virtually alone, and despite
the danger of internal
betrayal - the international
propaganda war and the fate
of Czechoslovakia would
already have been lost in
spring 1938. It would then
have required no Runciman
mission and no decision at

Munich, and even the last

heroic gesture of the
September mobilization
would have been denied the
country. Any objective
analysis of these tragic
events will confirm that our
organization still held the
Sudeten region politically
when the state bureaucracy
had already more or less
given it up.
These are the reasons, Mr.
President, why my comrades
are deeply embittered by the
lack of response which the
good will openly shown by
their legitimate
representatives has received
abroad.
In the consciousness of duty
one hundred percent fulfilled,
they do not care to be
discriminated against in
comparison to Slovak
representatives in
government or in the council
of state - representatives
whose authority is no greater
than our own. In this context,
dear Mr. President, I refer to
the exchange of telegrams in
London on September 27 and
28, 1941, to illustrate how a
token of honest good will
remained unanswered and
how a fund of personal trust
in the hearts of worthy
people was destroyed.
Perhaps I may add, and not
without justification, that I
despair at how Czech policy is

tending towards a
dictatorship directed against
old allies who had stood by
the Czech people when they
had been abandoned by all
their other friends.
I may summarize this
inducement to our latest
resolution with the following
observation:
The wholly negative position
taken by the instruments of
the temporary
Czechoslovakian state in
matters of mutual
agreement, even in terms of
political and economic interim
solutions, deprives our
attempts at rapprochement of
all foundations.
The program of population
transfer lies outside the
principle of continuity in
national law, in whose name
the Czechoslovakian
government has thus far
claimed the loyalty of the
democratic Sudeten Germans
abroad.
Our resolution is an appeal to
all responsible elements of
Czechoslovakian government
not to consider exclusively a
violent solution with which
they will drive those
democratic Sudeten Germans
who still feel ties to their
homeland into a conflict that
may have disastrous

repercussions for both sides.

Dear Mr. President, I am well
aware of the implications of
this observation. Permit me
to express my highest regard.
I am, Mr. President, your
humble servant Wenzel
Jaksch."
A transcript of the original
letter is reproduced on pages
255-257 of Verheimlichte
Dokumente by Erich Kern.

THE CZECH VICTIMS OF

RESISTANCE
According to a statement
made by the Prague
Ambassador to the United
States, J. Steinhart, to army
officers and diplomats in
Washington on December 15,
1947, the Czech victims of
resistance numbered 37,000
persons (including army-inexile in Italy, Monte Cassino,
student revolt in Prague,
incidents of sabotage, Lidice,
and 6,456 victims of Allied
bombing attacks).
In a February 6, 1990 Club II
discussion on Austrian radio
about the expulsion of the
Sudeten Germans, the Czech
participant, historian
Vancura, and his fellowcountryman Klen, blithely
inflated these 37,000 Czech
victims to 370,000. Not one
of the other participants in

this debate refuted this

deliberate misleading. Was it
a matter of ignorance, or of
cowardice? This massaging of
numbers was exposed in an
article in the Sudetenpost,
issue 5 of March 8, 1990,
signed A.J. The author of that
article continued:
"This game of numbers
cloaks the wish to clear the
Czechs of their misdeeds.
While the daily papers barely
mention the German losses
to war and expulsion, or
minimize them deliberately
for propagandistic
considerations, the losses of
the opposing side are
emphasized and even padded
with an extra zero if needed.
The endeavor is to foist on
the Sudeten Germans the
blame for war measures
taken by others, including by
the Czech government-inexile. 241,000 Sudeten
German and 250,000 German
prisoners of war fell victim of
the Czechs' enormous postWar rampages of pillage and
murder. Of the refugees
fleeing the bombing attacks
in the Reich proper and the
expellees from the eastern
and southeastern regions,
many thousands suffered the
same agonizing death."

BECAUSE THEY WERE

GERMAN!

The Stokes Report

Letter of the British Minister
and MP, R. R. Stokes to the
Manchester Guardian,
October 1945, as excerpted
from Verheimlichte
Dokumente, op.cit., p. 374:
"Months ago I learned of the
Czech practice of rounding up
young men who, under the
Decrees of Potsdam, were to
be expelled for reasons of
their ethnicity, and shipping
them off to labor
concentration camps. In fact,
many Sudeten German Social
Democrats who had been
sent to concentration camps
for their anti-National
Socialist views were now
committed to Czech labor
camps, solely because they
were German."
The 1945 memorandum of
Sudeten German Social
Democrat Wilhelm Niessner
to the government at Prague
makes similar observations
(as per Brgel, Tschechen
und Deutsche, v. 2, Munich,
1974).
The same goes for the
shocking letter of Wenzel
Jaksch, the Sudeten German
Social Democrat in exile, to
Dr. Edward Benes, the Czech
President-in-exile residing in
London.
The Stokes Report continues:

"There are 51 such camps in

Czechoslovakia, in which
thousands of people suffer
and starve; and when I say
starve, I mean that literally!"
In Account No. 288, p. 431 of
Dokumente zur Austreibung
der Sudetendeutschen
(Munich: Arbeitsgemeinschaft
zur Wahrung
Sudetendeutscher Interessen,
1951), Director Pischel of
Rokitnitz writes: "The men
who escaped death were sent
by the Czechs to hastily
established concentration
camps, 51 of them, where
they had to do hard labor, for
example underground
mining, with lousy rations
and constant maltreatment."
A concentration camp inmate
tells of the terrorism engaged
in by the victorious Allies.
(From Die Vertreibung
Sudetenlands 1945/46, Bad
Nauheim, 1967, p. 299.)
Josef Eckert was one of those
men whom the National
Socialists had thrown into
concentration camp Dachau
and for whom liberation came
on May 8, 1945. He came
from Brx, and after being
released from the
concentration camp he
hurried home to his native
city, which he had not seen
for many years. Later he
wrote one of his fellowsufferers from Dachau:

"The Czechs came to our city

as avengers driven by hatred.
First all German signs had to
be taken down. Then we had
to turn in all bicycles,
motorcycles, radio sets,
typewriters and telephones,
and harsh penalties were in
store for anyone who did not
obey this order. Then the
Czechs proceeded to plunder
our houses. They went
systematically from house to
house, from home to home
and stole furniture and linen,
clothing and jewelry, in a
word, anything they liked.
But the plundering was not
the end of it. There were also
murders. On one of these
horrible days they arrested
comrade Willi Seifert, from
Bandau. He was accused of
having hidden a roll of
telephone wire. At the Czech
command post in the inn
'Gebirgshhe' they stood him
up against a wall and
murdered him from behind."

STIGMA "N" EVEN FOR

ANTI-FASCISTS
In 1945 the Sudeten German
Social Democrat Wilhelm
Niesser sent the following
memorandum to the Prague
government (quoted from
Brgel, op.cit.):
Like the Jews during the
Middle Ages and the NS

regime, the Sudeten

Germans were forced to wear
an identifying mark ("N" =
"Nemec" = "German") in
public.
"Even today, I, who was
perhaps the oldest among
those who used to be at the
forefront of our movement,
still receive cries for help
from the most loyal of my
comrades, from all parts of
the Republic. The bitter
suffering that speaks through
their appeals distresses me to
the depths of my soul. Many
of my friends who share my
views are still locked up in
the various camps. They have
lost not only their freedom,
but also their homes and
what little property they had.
"Socialists and anti-Fascists among them some who are
known to be long-time
functionaries of the Socialist
parties and who took up arms
to oppose the Nazi gangs in
1938 - are being arrested,
driven out of their homes
right along with the Fascists,
and transported off. In terms
of rations, the anti-Fascists
are put on a par with the
Fascists, and are given only
the shortened ration cards
that condemn them to a life
of perpetual starvation. In
many places they are made
to wear the same identifying
mark as the Fascists, 'N'
(Nemec = German), that

stigmatizes them as
defamed.
"The establishment of antiFascist committees had been
ordered, but even now,
months later, work on this
has barely even begun in
some places. Many of our
comrades, men and women
alike, have lost their lives in
the camps and on the
transports." (From:
Verheimlichte Dokumente,
op.cit., pp. 391-92.)

EXPULSION FROM THE

SOUTH MORAVIAN
HOMELAND

From pages 59-60 of the 3rd

ed. of _Wie es wirklich war,
the memoirs of Anna
Spangl_, born in Prittlach,
South Moravia.
"...We were standing on the
steps, lamenting our dreadful
fate; all of a sudden we heard
loud singing and howls of
excitement outside. I looked
out the gate, oh horror, there
were some 100 men from
Rackwitz marching along,
each of them with a bludgeon
in his hand - the gendarme
out front, and the others
behind him in rows of four.
They stopped outside the inn
and spread out. In pairs of
twos they ran into the
houses, like madmen, and
drove out the inhabitants of
the entire town, first herding

them together in front of the

inn and then to Rackwitz into
a barn. Here we had to spend
the night in the dirt. All night
long they took random shots
at the people in the barn.
Early in the morning we had
to set off; again they drove
us along with their clubs and
bludgeons. The children
screamed in fear. Let no-one
think that it was the just the
lowest rabble that drove us
out in such a barbaric
manner! The doctor,
government officials,
teachers, right down to the
common laborers - all classes
were involved. We had no
idea what would happen to
us. We were herded on
without even being able to
take any of our possessions.
We dragged ourselves
towards the town of Kostel.
High school teacher Vessely
walked beside me, club in
hand. He was a good
acquaintance of mine, and so
I dared ask him: 'For God's
sake, what are you doing
with us?' He answered:
'Because I like you so much,
I'll tell you. In Lundenburg
you'll be put on a wagon train
and shipped off to Siberia,
but I'll give you some good
advice, when the train moves
out you jump off it quickly,
because from there it's not
far for you to get to Austria.
Your parents are already old
anyhow, it's not much loss if
they are sent to Siberia.' So

that was the advice an

educated man gave me! The
farmer Valenta from Rackwitz
acted similarly. He was
wearing a Czech uniform years ago he had used to
embrace the German soldiers
in our basement! My father
was happy to see a friend finally, a decent Czech! - and
wanted to greet him - but
evidently there was no decent
Czech there after all, because
Valenta put out his hand and
said to my father, 'Go on, just
keep marching.'
"I can't bear to recall what a
terrible state of mind we
were in, and how physically
run-down. Without a home,
stripped of all human dignity,
lying in the ditch like mangy
dogs, no refuge for us
anywhere - cast out of our
beloved ancestral home and
shunned by society, hungry
and cruelly expelled."
In her memoirs _Wie es
wirklich war_, Anna Spangl
recalls the plundering,
destruction, damage and rape
and recounts on pp. 49-50
how old Frau Rebefka was
shot because she had tried to
protect the Ukrainian woman
who had worked for her from
being raped. "The women
were hunted like rabbits, the
best hiding places were found
out, and women were raped
with no regard to their age,
whether they were ten or 90.

My grandmother's sister was

86 years old and almost
blind, she was raped twice.
Because I put up a fight with
hands and feet against being
raped, those sadists dragged
me like an animal to the
slaughter - right past my
father. He cried, 'for God's
sake, why didn't I let her go
away?' My mother was
sobbing terribly, and my
tormentors took me into the
neighboring house. Four men
raped me there. The first one
was an officer, the last a
horribly ugly Asian. There
was sobbing and screaming
everywhere. Often the
parents were forced to watch
the rape of their daughters,
and vice versa, the children
had to watch their mothers
being violated. Many women
contracted venereal diseases,
and I wasn't spared that
either. Some time later, all
women had to go to Rackwitz
for a medical exam. Those
who didn't go kept it secret
because they were ashamed."

THE MASS CRIMES

AGAINST THE SUDETEN
GERMANS TOOK PLACE
IN PUBLIC
Non-Stop Mass Murders

Landskron: in some towns

"Revolutionary Courts"
convened prior to the mass
executions.

Theresia Lindenmeier,
Trotzau:
"Around June 12, 1945,
partisans rounded up the
entire population of Trotzau.
Then the names of five
people who were to be shot
were read out. One of them
was absent because he hadn't
yet returned from the
Wehrmacht. At that, the
leader of the partisans tore
up the paper with the names
and declared that he would
instead choose 20 people
from the crowd to be shot. He
picked 20 men at random,
and these were first beaten
bloody by the attending
Czech population and then
riddled with bullets so that
they all collapsed into one
heap. A few days earlier the
entire Bartl family from
Trotzau, five people, had

been shot. Their bodies were

yanked back out of the coffins
that the community had
provided, and they were
buried beside the cemetery
instead, at the edge of a
field.
"At about the same time, a
farmer's family in Krottendorf
near Trotzau was shot by
partisans - man, wife and
their nine-month-old child. In
the neighboring village the
husband and brother of a
peasant woman were shot.
The farmer's wife herself had
to dig a grave in the
vegetable garden and to bury
them in it. It was forbidden,
on pain of death, to speak of
these things.
"I can take this testimony on
my oath, and bring many
witnesses to support it."
Engineer Franz Rosch
reports:
"From May 12 to 15, 1945 I
was assigned to a burial
commando in Wolkowitz.
There I saw how thousands of
German soldiers as well as
civilians - women and men
and even young people 10
years and up - were brutally
murdered. Mostly they were
clubbed to death by Czech
Revolutionary Guardsmen.
Often the dreadfully battered
bodies were rubbed with
hydrochloric acid, just to

torture them. One Dr. Blume

of Berlin was in charge of
ascertaining the death of
these people. Fingers with
rings on them were torn off
some people's hands while
the people still lived. The
dead were buried in a mass
grave in Wolkowitz, by the
cemetery.
"From the work unit in
Wolkowitz I was sent to the
penal camp Kladno, where I
saw inmates being scalded
with hot tea on their bare
skin, on their back and
buttocks, and being beaten
terribly afterwards. In the
two months I spent there, I
myself was beaten daily."
Franz Kaupil tells of the Czech
reign of terror in Iglau:
"On May 13, 1945 the Czech
reign of terror began in Iglau.
About 1,200 Germans
committed suicide the
following night. By Christmas
there were some 2,000 dead.
On May 24 and 25 partisans
drove the German population
out of their homes within
twenty minutes and locked
them into the camps
Helenental and Altenburg.
These camps were officially
known as concentration
camps. Both camps held
about 6,700 people. There
was not enough water,
neither for drinking nor for
other purposes. There were

no toilet or washing facilities.

For the first days there was
also no food, and later only a
thin watery soup and 3 1/2
ounces of bread daily. After
the first eight days children
were given a cup of milk.
Each day several elderly
people and children died. On
June 8 the inmates of
Helenental were robbed of
even their last possessions,
and the next day they were
marched more than 20 miles
via Teltsch to Stangern. On
this death march the people
were constantly urged to
greater speed with
whippings. 350 people lost
their lives to exhaustion and
hunger on this trek."
Franz Kaupil continues: "In
Stangern 3,500 people were
crammed into a camp with an
intended capacity of 250.
Most of them had to camp
outdoors, despite the rain.
The next day, families - men,
women and children - were
quartered separately. The
food was unfit for human
consumption. In the course of
a shooting in the women's
camp four women were
killed, among them Frau
Friedl and Frau Kerpes, and
one woman was badly
injured. Corporal punishment
was the order of the day for
men and women alike. There
was even a separate cell for
beatings.

"The camp administration

rented the inmates out to the
Czech farmers as workers."
Franz Kaupil recalls further
that on June 10, 1945 16
inmates from Iglau were
taken from their cells and
shot in the Ranzenwald
forest. "Among them was the
old town priest Honsik, the
gentlemen Howorka,
Augustin, Biskons, Brunner,
Laschka, Martel, Kstler, and
others whom I did not know.
As late as May 1945,
Krautschneider, Kaliwoda,
Mller and Ruffa were shot in
the court hall without any
trial at all. One Hoffmann was
beaten to death. Rychetzky
was the warder whom
everyone feared most.
Factory owner Krebs was
scalped. Building contractor
Lang died of the effects of
horrible maltreatment. 70year-old Colonel Zobel hung
himself in the cell.
"Many people had been
forced with brutal abuse to
give incriminating
statements, and were now
held for crimes they had
never committed at all.
"I can take this statement on
my oath, and can also
produce further witnesses to
these events."

THE HOLOCAUST OF

PRAGUE

Excerpt from the book

_Zwiespalt der Gemter_ by
Alexander Hoyer:
"In the night of May 4-5,
1945 the mass murders
began in Prague. The most
gruesome events of the
Middle Ages pale in
comparison to the murderous
blood lust that played itself
out in the streets, houses and
most of all the hospitals of
Prague.
After the all-out war effort
had been proclaimed in 1944,
medical student Ingrid Langer
had signed up as Red Cross
nurse. She was stationed in
the Luftwaffe hospital on the
right bank of the Moldau
River in Prague. In the
morning of May 6 a sizeable
group of young Czech men
and girls arrived howling and
yelling at the main entrance
of the hospital and,
threatening with submachine
guns, demanded that all Red
Cross nurses, as well as all
the wounded who could walk,
should come out. When the
doctors tried to dissuade the
mob from their demands, and
pointed out the regulations of
the Red Cross, under whose
protection the hospital was,
the riotous mob roared with
laughter. The armed
ringleaders stormed into the
hospital rooms and drove the
wounded in their striped

pajamas out before them.

Other heroes of this kind
brought out all the nurses on
duty, lined them up and
selected the ten youngest
and prettiest of them. Ingrid
Langer was among them.
After lengthy arguments
among the teenaged
hoodlums as to what sorts of
abuse they would engage in,
they agreed to march their
victims into town.
Along with a selected 10
wounded patients, the nurses
had to line up in rows of two
and march off, singing the
German national anthem.
Anyone who did not sing
loudly enough, or at all, was
beaten until his or her voice
was audible. To either side of
the street the compatriots of
the wild mob stood
applauding. The procession
was stopped in Peter's
Square, which seemed to be
the arena best suited for the
planned macabre game.
A bow-legged descendant of
the Awars shrieked:
"Undress! Everyone undress
completely!" Since the
unfortunate victims made no
move to take off their
clothes, he gave his
accomplices the sign to start
beating.
The wounded and the nurses

were smashed to the

pavement, some beside and
on top of each other, unable
even to move.
"Undress or die!" the sadist
kept screaming.
The wounded soldiers soon
took off their hospital
pajamas. Stark naked, they
were at the mercy of the
goggling crowd. The nurses
as yet retained their
underwear. No-one minded
that their undressing took a
little longer, for the
surrounding crowd relished
the sight of these half-naked
German Red Cross nurses.
But then the ringleader
demanded that the stripping
be completed.
"Undress! Finish undressing!"
he roared again, "strip to the
skin, you swine!" At last,
when all ten finally stood
stark naked in the middle of
the square, hiding their faces
in their hands, the Prague
citizens' merriment rose to a
fever pitch. But Ingrid Langer,
who had grown up in Prague,
knew her Czech fellow
citizens only too well. She
knew that the final act of the
drama staged here would be
a deliberately drawn-out but
all the more gruesome death.
Like lightning she made a
break for it, darted through a
weak point in their
encirclement, and dashed off

towards the lower end of the

square. Before the baffled
bystanders realized it, she
had escaped the arena of
death. But at the square's
end Ingrid Langer ran right
into the hands of her next
tormentors!
A band of plunderers, heavily
laden with rugs, paintings,
furs, tableware and more,
caught the naked fleeing girl
in a flash. They dragged her
into the house they had just
left, up to the first floor, into
the home they had
plundered. In the hallway on
the floor lay a dead woman
about 25 years old. Next to
her huddled a child of
perhaps two, bloodbespattered and sobbing
bitterly. The captured naked
beauty was shoved into a
bedroom to a host of obscene
comments. At the sight of the
pretty young girl all the
plunderers had turned back,
in the certain expectation of a
good time. There was not one
among them that did not
participate in the ensuing
rape. More Czechs who came
running in continued their
predecessors' disgraceful
deed. At last the victim
mercifully lost consciousness.
Meanwhile, the macabre
spectacle in Peter's Square
had continued. The nine yet
surviving Red Cross nurses
had been lined up opposite

the injured men, naked as

they were, and the nurses
were ordered to tear the
men's private parts off. An
unbelievably brutish idea. The
victims themselves could
hardly believe the perverted
orders. "Rip it off! Rip it off!"
And right away the entire
crowd joined in, roaring and
chanting and clapping their
hands in rhythm. None of the
German girls could be forced
to even try to carry out the
bestial order. They ignored
the ever more threatening
demands of the crowd, which
was literally going wild. Not
one made any move to
comply, even after most of
them had already collapsed,
unconscious, under the blows
from the rifle butts.
Never before in history had
the world seen human cruelty
to equal what happened here!

THE DEATH MARCH OF

BRUNN
"Beat them, beat them,
leave none alive!"
An Zizka's Hussite War battle
cry of the early 15th century,
"Beat them, beat them, leave
none alive!", was echoed and
turned into infernal,
gruesome reality by that latemedieval Czech knight's
descendants in the death
march of Brnn on Corpus

Christi 1945.
Just as in those early days,
the masses, inflamed by their
leadership, abandoned
themselves publicly and
without shame or conscience
to a degree of brutality and
bestiality that few outsiders
could have conceived of.
Tens of thousands of Brnn
citizens - mostly women and
children, but also elderly
people - were ruthlessly
driven from their homes,
robbed of all their
possessions, and hunted via
Pohrlitz to the Austrian
border with little more than
the clothes on their backs.
Whoever collapsed remained
where he fell, was beaten, or
shot without much ado. Old
people and little children
dropped like flies from thirst,
hunger and exhaustion. The
catastrophic sanitary
conditions in the transit camp
Pohrlitz following a dysentery
epidemic meant a rich
harvest for death there as
well.
Frau Theresia Beichl, who
was on this death march with
her little daughter, recounts
the following: "I saw a
woman giving birth in a ditch.
Afterwards the Czechs beat
her to death and trampled
the newborn until it was dead
too."

That such incredible

brutishness was not an
isolated case is shown by the
account of Frau M.V.W.
(Report #19, Dokumente zur
Austreibung der
Sudetendeutschen, op.cit., p.
67), who recounts being
ordered (with reference to a
dead mother and child) to
"throw the dirty pig and her
bastard into the latrine!"
When M.V.W., a Red Cross
nurse, refused, two other
women were forced to
perform the abominable deed
and to throw the dead
mother and baby into the
open latrine. Weeks later it
was still possible to see the
baby's head and one of the
mother's arms sticking out of
the filth.
The murders and brutality
that accompanied this forced
march to Austria are
uncounted.
In Pohrlitz, one of the largest
of all mass graves remains as
silent witness to this death
march, and there is hardly a
town or village all the way to
the border where some dead
were not buried, thrown like
dogs into shallow graves.
It was a 60-km crusade of
Germans forcibly expelled
from Brnn and tortured to
the point of death.

THE EXPULSION FROM

BRUNN
(The "Death March of
Brnn")
by Theresia Beichl,
Meisenweg 10, Knigsbrunn;
born in Prittlach, South
Moravia
It was early in the morning
that someone knocked - no pounded on my door as hard
as he could, probably with a
rifle butt, and yelled: "Get
out, you German swine, right
away, and don't you dare
take anything with you or you
will be shot." It was an armed
Czech that made his orders
known in this way. And
indeed I was able to take
hardly any of my
possessions, because I had a
three-year-old son whom I
still had to push in his
carriage. Head over heels I
hurried to stuff a tiny carriage
pillow with a few things for
the child. I put a light blanket
into the pram and took the
small knapsack, containing a
bag of noodles and some dry
bread, which I had always
used to keep in the air raid
shelter. Then I went to the
assigned gathering place.
When I say "go" or "went",
that means at a run and
under threat of blows which
landed often and well-aimed.
I could no longer even cry or
complain, for all the

degradation, rapes, beatings

and humiliation that I had
already had to endure had
turned my heart to stone. We
weren't allowed to cry,
anyhow - crying mothers and
children were silenced with
cuffs and blows. Our guards "caretakers", as the Czechs
called themselves (to me
they were fiends) - waited
eagerly for any such
opportunity, when someone
cried, to give free rein to
their tyranny and rage.
It was at Corpus Christi. The
gathering point in the Black
Fields (suburb of Brnn) was
jam-packed with people.
Besides the mothers with
their children, old and sick
people had also been rounded
up. We stood there for a very
long time. Then our
tormentors told us, with
much roaring and yelling and
many blows, to line up in
rows of two to march off.
Anyone who did not
understand the Czech
language and asked his
neighbor questions in
German was punished with
blows to the face. Every blow
and every punch was a shock
for me that I still have not
forgotten. Why do people so
grossly maltreat others who
have done no wrong? The
Germans who had remained
in Brnn (many had already
fled from the Russians) and
had weathered the war to its

bitter end in their own four

walls had never been on bad
terms with the Czechs. On
the contrary, we had always
shared generously with them
what little we had. I would
never have believed that a
Czech could be so abusive.
Under roared orders and
blows from whips we were
herded from the Black Fields
via the Children's Hospital to
Prague Street, where we
spent the night crowded
together in a courtyard,
standing or huddled down.
That night was brutal. Time
and again Russian soldiers
came, the worst of them
were the Mongols with their
slitty eyes, and dragged
women off with them,
allegedly to work in the
kitchen. They didn't care
what age the women were;
14- and 15-year-old girls
were also taken for "kitchen
duty". Hours later they
returned, raped and sobbing.
And because they were crying
the Czechs threw in some
additional blows.
God had mercy on me that
night. I had trod that path of
suffering already a few days
before.
At daybreak the Czech guards
came - they were different
ones this time, with even
more rage and power behind
their blows - and drove us

like a herd of cattle onto the

street. We had to watch
captured German soldiers
march by while being beaten
and spat on by the Czech
population. All the Germans
had become fair game, and
any Czech and Russian could
vent whatever brutalities he
wanted on us. We had to line
up again, and set off on a
long trek.
Dear reader, try to imagine
that trek of worn-out
mothers, sick children and
elderly people! We had no
idea where we were going.
There was a rumor that
Czechs wanted to ship us off
to Austria, but no-one was
sure of it. We covered about
50 kilometers, all on foot. It's
not called "the Death March
of Brnn" for no reason. I
know - I was there.
We were marched past the
main cemetery; my thoughts
were with the dead that
rested there, and I envied
them their eternal peaceful
sleep. Then, past Raigern and
on to Pohrlitz. The way was
long and horrible. We
traveled all day. The line of
people grew ever longer,
because more and more were
added from the various
suburbs we passed. someone
was always screaming and
landing random blows on the
suffering people. Whoever
was not strong enough to

continue stayed were he fell.

Usually these wasted people
were shoved into the ditch,
kicked a few times, and left
lying there. Helping each
other was forbidden, and to
try it would have meant
death. It was deeply painful
to me to see my old biology
teacher, Dr. Massl, collapsed
by the wayside, totally
exhausted and weakened. His
daughter was not allowed to
help him either, and had to
continue on that stony path
without her father. Dr. Massl's
fate was shared by many old
and fragile people who lay
along the road exhausted,
debilitated and disheartened,
but ever prodded on by the
Czechs until they finally
collapsed totally. To this day I
can still hear the screams of
these beaten old people. I
prayed fervently to God to
give me the strength,
courage and endurance to
take my child to safety from
these thugs.
My hatred for our tormentors
grew by the hour. When a
mother nurses her baby by
the side of the road, or
another has warmed some
milk for her child over a
candle flame, and they have
to suffer beatings for it, who
could not harbor feelings of
hate at such treatment? The
most horrible thing I saw was
when a young woman lay on
a meadow and had just given

birth. She screamed and

cried, but both she and her
newborn were beaten and
kicked until they lay dead.
They were left there, and I
heard our "escort" say: "Let
them croak, they're just
Germans." I had a fair
command of the Czech
language and so I was able to
understand everything they
said.
For a while I was close to
collapsing, but I had a child a hungry, thirsty and
frightened child. The incident
with the poor mother and
newborn had shocked me
deeply again, but on the
other hand it strengthened
my resolve to save my own
child.
The march to Pohrlitz slowed
down more and more as we
were not able to go on
further. The roars and
beatings from our Czechs
increased in number and
severity. The dead that lined
the road - we lost count of
them. Many were beaten or
trampled to death.
Where had these tormentors
come from, that acted worse
than wild animals?!
To keep moving was all I
could think of - mute and
exhausted, the child in its
carriage no less so. We were
all so hungry and thirsty but

we were forbidden to eat or

drink. Furtively I gave my son
some of the bread that I had
with me, and told him to
make it last as long as he
could, and if one of these
thugs with the whips were to
come by, he should take care
not to move his mouth. God,
what conditions for a bite of
bread!
Halfway to Pohrlitz a
thunderstorm surprised us,
with a heavy downpour that
drenched us to the skin. No
one was allowed to seek
shelter under one of the trees
by the road. I covered my
child with the blanket I had
taken along, but the rain
soaked it and made it so
heavy that I had to throw it
away. Many Czech inhabitants
from the surrounding villages
took everything from us that
they could get their hands
on. A frightened, trembling
old man was carrying a small
back pack, and suddenly he
was yanked out of the line,
beaten with a rubber hose,
his back pack was searched
and when they found an old
alarm clock in it he was
dragged to the side of the
road and beaten until he
could no longer move. After
all, before starting on this
death march we had had to
guarantee that we had not
taken any valuables from our
homes. To the Czechs that
old alarm clock was a

valuable.
Oh human being, what is left
of you! A beaten, outcast,
spat-on, violated creature,
driven out and tortured to
death!
I grew ever more wretched.
Only a few days earlier I had
been at the height of a bout
of purulent tonsillitis and had
been tormented and raped by
the Russians, who descended
like wild animals on us
women only when they were
drunk. My child was ever a
source of strength to me, and
I had only one thought - to
take him to safety or else die
together with him.
Sometimes I wonder how a
human body was able to
survive the strain that this
martyrdom inflicted.
It was evening, and we
arrived in Pohrlitz at the end
of our last ounce of strength.
All I remember is that our
first lodging must have been
a fabric store at one time.
The furnishings consisted of
nothing but massive shelves,
and I laid my tired child and
myself on one of those bare
boards. The people's faces
were puffed up beyond
recognition from the many
blows they had received, and
other body parts such as
arms and legs were covered
with welts. No end to this
torture and no ray of hope

were in sight. That night was

another night of horror there was no sleep for us
women, only fear of the
Russians who of course came
to fetch us to "peel potatoes"
(that's what they called their
atrocities here too).
The Czechs beat us, the
Russians raped us. Dear
reader, why don't you ask if
we couldn't defend ourselves,
put up some resistance to all
these misdeeds? No, for you
see, we were not asked for
these services - we were
forced at gunpoint. Refusal
would have meant certain
death.
We spent the next days and
nights in a warehouse. The
floor was covered with straw,
as is usual in stables. Some
of us were put into grain
silos, where we had to sleep
on the bare concrete floor.
We lay squeezed together like
herrings in a can, the air was
bad, there were no sanitary
facilities, and illness and
disease flourished. Doctors?
Medication? None!

One of the many dead from

among the millions of

expellees.
We were not "allowed" to be
hungry. Every now and then
we were given some soup of
watered-down roasted flour.
Festering feet, the result of
our long march, were the
order of the day. The worst
was diarrhea, dysentery and
typhus. As I've said before,
there were no sanitary
facilities - only a latrine, but
the sick people couldn't use
that because they were too
weak to walk there to relieve
themselves. There were two
toilets, but only the Czech
guard personnel were allowed
to use them. An old, beatenup man always had to clean
these toilets, but with his
bare hands. The fine
gentlemen that could use
them to answer their calls of
nature did not do so into the
toilet bowls, but rather beside
them, and deliberately so.
One day we found the old
man beaten into a dreadful
shape, lying dead in front of
the toilet door. People were
dying like flies in Pohrlitz.
In my desperation - or
perhaps it was a message
from my guardian angel (I
never lost my faith
throughout all of this) - I
remembered that an aunt of
mine, actually a very distant
relative, lived in Pohrlitz.
Surreptitiously, always in fear
of being discovered, I

managed to contact her. We

prisoners went to a little
stream each day to wash
ourselves, and on one of
these opportunities I went to
her and gave her a brief
account of my situation. Even
though she was a German
herself, she was yet allowed
to stay in her house, because
she worked for a Czech.
Through a hole in the fence,
her daughter, then eight
years old, brought me a bit of
warm soup and some nut
spirits for the diarrhea.
Dear Mitzi, you live in Vienna
today and I am still grateful
to you from the bottom of my
heart.
Of course our arrangement
was found out, and we were
threatened that if we dared
meet again we would be shot.
We had been in this camp for
about fourteen days when we
were told that whoever
wanted to go on to Austria
could walk there - under
guard again, of course. I
wanted to go; Austria was a
ray of hope to me. The trek
we started on was just as
harsh and difficult as before.
In Nikolsburg we were herded
up the Muscherlberg
mountain (there was
supposed to be a prison at
the top). It was a very hot
day and the people were

parched and begged on their

knees for a drop of water.
There were wells, and water
in them, but we were told
that the water was
contaminated and not fit to
drink, as typhus had broken
out everywhere. My child and
I could only moan, for we
were just as hungry and
thirsty as everyone else. Our
lips were cracked from the
heat and our bodies were
drying out. Wretched, abused
figures tottered around crying
for water. And again many
died. I huddled in a corner by
the wall with my child and
sobbed quietly to myself.
Some of our guards had
vanished, and we were left to
ourselves.
And again a saving grace
found me at the last minute.
A young man wearing a
Czech uniform walked over to
us, gave us a canteen with
water, looked at us and said
in German: "Don't drink, just
rinse your mouth!" He left
again. We knew each other in 1941 my husband and I
had attended a course in
Italian at the adult education
center in Brnn, and that
young man had had the seat
next to ours. I didn't know
his name, we had spoken to
each other in German in
those days and I had been
sure that he was a German.
But how did he come to wear
a Czech uniform? It will be a

mystery to me forever, but I

owe him the water that saved
my life.
We were told that we could
now cross the Austrian
border, which was very close.
The Red Cross was waiting
for us, we were told, and we
would be fed and taken care
of there. Finally, the light at
the end of the tunnel! We
went to the border en masse,
but when I saw that the
Austrian border guards
turned our multitudes back
again, I set off on a detour on
my own. Red Cross - that had
been a filthy, dirty lie,
invented out of thin air by the
Czechs! There was no Red
Cross there, and nobody
wanted us. My decision to
continue on my own had
been the right one, otherwise
I would have had to return to
one of the Czech mass
camps, and would have
perished there like so many
others.
Drasenhofen was the first
village on Austrian soil that I
reached. On the roads and
streets I met many mothers
with their children who had
also broken out of the
marching column and struck
out on their own. Old people
were fewer and farther
between; they had all died.
Everyone's goal was to reach
Vienna. It was already a
pleasure for me to be on

Austrian soil and to be able to

speak German again. An
older woman who lived in a
single-story yellow house in
Drasenhofen took us in for
the night. We got a bit of
bread to eat, and a bed was
readied for us in a chamber. I
was happy. Just once I would
have a peaceful night's rest.
But in the middle of the night
there was a pounding on my
door, and in came four stonedrunk, dirty Russians, pulled
me out of bed like a piece of
meat and dragged me into
another room, where all four
of them victimized me. I
should have known that this
area was occupied by
Russians, and that every Red
soldier was under orders from
Stalin to rape the German
women wherever and
however they could. [In his
three volumes War, 19421943, Soviet propaganda
minister Ilya Ehrenburg
exhorted the Red soldiers:]
"The Germans are not human
beings. For us there is
nothing more amusing than
German corpses." (The
original of this appeal for
extermination is held at the
Political Archives of the
Foreign Office in Bonn.) (cf.
Erich Kern, Verheimlichte
Dokumente: Was den
Deutschen verschwiegen
wird, p. 354.)
I had believed myself safe on
Austrian soil too soon. Now I

was totally at the end of my

tether, I was sicker than ever
and could hardly walk a step
anymore. But I wanted to get
to Vienna, I wanted to take
my child to safety and Vienna
was still so far off.
I wandered from one village
to the next, avoiding the
Russian camps, to which the
Austrians alerted me, I
knocked everywhere but
hardly a door was opened to
me. "We're full up with
refugees from South
Moravia," I was always told.
(Refugees is not the correct
term, since we were all
expellees.) I believed it,
because all of South Moravia,
which was after all a German
region, had been going to
Austria. We all had relatives
and acquaintances there. I
constantly hoped to meet up
with my parents along my
way, which they had probably
also gone. Hunger and thirst
were our constant
companions. The most
crushing reply I would get
was "we don't take women
with children." When anyone
felt sorry for us, they would
send us to the goat shed,
gave us a bundle of straw,
and we could rest our weary
heads there. We were also
relatively safe from the
Russians there. We were no
longer beaten, but the
Russian soldiers were all the
more terrible in their rage. In

the village of Schrick, where

we were allowed to stay the
night in the goat shed, we
were also given a glass of
goat's milk in the morning,
but we vomited it up again
right away because our
starved stomachs could not
handle the rich milk. On we
went towards Vienna, but not
on the roads, rather, across
the fields, so that the
Russians would not see us.
The streets were
overcrowded anyhow with
droves of people who all
wanted to move on and on.
In every town many had to
stay behind because they
were simply not able to travel
further. They died of
exhaustion and diseases.
There is not a village or town
along the way from
Drasenhofen to Vienna that
does not have a memorial
plaque in its cemetery,
stating how many expellees
lie in the mass graves there.
My shoes had worn out, the
soles were falling off, and so I
trekked on barefoot. I went
on for a week, trudging from
town to town like a beggar
woman. Most of the places
we passed through were
farming villages, and we
would be given the occasional
chunk of bread. But there
were also many curse words
for us, from trash to tramp to
Nazi swine. And this was in

Austria!
Finally we arrived in the town
of Wolkersdorf. The baby
carriage had also broken in
the meantime and I pushed it
on three wheels for the last
few miles. On the way there I
already learned from native
villagers that my parents
were in Wolkersdorf, working
for a farmer and terribly
worried about me. They had
also been expelled from their
house and home in Prittlach,
South Moravia. I, on the
other hand, had studied in
Brnn, married in Brnn,
lived in Brnn, and thus my
odyssey of suffering had also
begun in Brnn.
I found my parents, but they
barely recognized me, as
emaciated, sick and tired as I
was. The same went for my
child. We fell into each
other's arms, all of us wept
bitterly, but there was no real
joy. The farmer took me in
with great displeasure, but I
had to promise to be on my
way again in a week. I was
just grateful to be able to
spend a few days in safety
and security.
My greatest wish is that the
future will never permit such
disgraceful happenings again!

ACTS OF VIOLENCE

DURING THE 1945

EXPULSION.
Sudeten Mountains:
Murders of Sudeten
Germans

Excerpts from
"Riesengebirgs-Heimat
ermannseifen: by verdict of
the Commander of Arnau,
executed publicly before the
entire community on June 29,
1945":
Andreas Pohl, butcher; Franz
Pohl (his son); Josef Gaber,
baker; Josef Stransky,
barber; Alois Struchlik,
laborer; Frau Pohl
subsequently hanged herself.
Marstig: executed in June
1945 by Czech soldiers from
Arnau and the Narodni Vybor,
before the entire community:
Nittner (Hohenelbe), Stefan
Rzehak, mayor; Josef Gall,
master spinner; Josef
Tauchmann, company
representative of factory
Mandl; Anton Jochmann,
railwayman.
Vordermastig: May 1945:
Josef Schrfel, innkeeper,
hanged himself. His wife took
poison when his estate was
plundered during the
occupation.
Keilbaude: Braun, innkeeper,

murdered.
Schnsselbauden: Raimund
Kraus and Johann Hollmann,
shot by partisans.
Hntten-Witkowitz: Rudolf
Schier, died in the Jitschin
prison.
Theresiental: June 1945:
Alois Baruschka, abused,
then shot.
Jablonetz: September 8,
1945: Schimmer, died
following abuse in KarthausJitschin.
Mastig: May 1945: Alfred
Kuhn, beaten to death near
Jitschin.
Spindlermnhle: Alfred Fischer,
senior primary school
teacher, murdered in May
1945. Hans Buchberger and
his mother, murdered in
Trautenau in May 1945.
Arnau: Heinz Soukop,
Eichmann's procurator, shot
by a firing squad on June 10,
1945. Erich Kowarsch,
brewery employee, beaten to
death in early June 1945;
Josef Rummler and his wife
Marie, ne Petrik, were
brutishly abused and then
shot on June 18, 1945. Many
poisoned themselves
(Iwonsky, family Schenk,
Melichar).

Klein-Borowitz: June 18,

1945: Linhart and his wife,
Mnller, arrested in Arnau,
beaten and tortured in the
Eichmann Basement, then
taken to Mastig on June 21,
1945 and shot on the orders
and in the presence of the
Czech Commander of Arnau,
Captain Wurm from
Horoschitz.
Ponikla: mayor Knappe
executed in Starkenbach.
Rochlitz: Fritz Sedel of
Oberrochlitz, arrested in May
1945, sent to Starkenbach in
January 1946, then to the
concentration camp
Hrabatschow; has been
missing ever since.
Zittau-Neuhammer: along
this stretch of road some 60
to 80 German prisoners of
war, among them many
Sudeten Germans from
Lauban, were butchered
because they could not keep
up the pace of this death
march. Final stopover via
Sagan was the camp
Jaworczno near Auschwitz,
where everyone had to work
in the mine and 18 died, 1
suicide, and some were shot
trying to escape; among
them were many from the
Sudeten Mountains.
Kukus: mid-May 1945:
Ginzkey, teacher from
Reichenberg, brutally beaten,

then died; Petran, teacher

from Seidenschwanz, and
Karl Schneider, gardener from
Gradlitz, beaten and shot
behind the railway yard; Alois
Slaboch, senior civil servant,
and Eusebius Areyczuk,
Ukrainian greengrocer, both
beaten and then shot in the
Stangendorf quarry. Frau
Slaboch cut her throat.
Gutsmuts-Arnau: Wilhelm
Pradler, construction master,
and his wife Maria, shot in
Proschwitz in front of the Elb
mill on April 23, 1945;
slandered and betrayed by:
Amler, Nossek and Schiefert,
as well as a Czech from
Proschwitz.
Schwarzenthal: Hubert
Wawra, administrator,
murdered at Mencik near
Hohenelbe. A total of 17
inhabitants disappeared; 14
of them were: Franz Munser,
master dyer; Franz Krhn,
farmer near Mencik; Josef
Ettrich, coachman; Franz
Seidel, carpenter; Wenzel
Seidel, mailman; Maiwald,
master saddler; Johann
Kraus, master dyer; Josef
Kraus, near Mencik; Oswald
Renner, telephonist; Wonka,
farmer; Josef Schneider,
quarry laborer; Josef Langer,
office employee; Edi Klust,
master weaver.
Lauterwasser: January 24,
1945: Johann Zirm,

policeman, hung in Jitschin.

They paid for the War:

civilians, shot or beaten to
death,
lined the path of the
expellees in the East.

MURDER GANG KOKOFF

The Night of Horror at the
Glassworks (June 1945)
After the gruesome excesses
on the Jahn Sports Field in
Komotau, the other victims
were herded out of the city.
In rows of six they were
marched up the Weinberg
mountain. All the windows in
the city and the villages were
shut, and people were
nowhere to be seen; and
where a frightened face did
peer out behind the curtains,
shots were fired at it without
mercy. The column seemed
endless, some 6,000 to
8,000, including many elderly

and ill.
The guard had been
reinforced. Every 10 to 15
meters a soldier walked
along, with submachine gun
at the ready, and at the end
of the column drove a truck
with a machine gun set up on
it. Everyone wondered
silently, "what new devilry
are they up to now?"
Soon we passed Lake Alaun,
through Udwitz and Grkau
and to Rottenhaus. Yes, we
had always seen you with a
glad heart before, beloved
homeland, we hiked through
and explored your nooks and
crannies. Hide your face and
weep with your sons, herded
along here now like animals
towards an uncertain fate!
Time and again we were
ordered to run, and rifle butts
and whips urged us on. A
political leader in uniform was
ordered to run around the
column of people, a picture of
Hitler in his hand. He didn't
last long. Soon afterwards I
saw others drop out of the
rows and collapse in
exhaustion at the side of the
road (Willomitzer). And now
the terrible happened. The
Czechs had posted a followup commando, whose task it
was to finish off - with a
bullet into the back of the
neck - anyone who dropped
behind. The shots rang out

behind us with everincreasing frequency as the

murderers were kept busy.
The Czechs urged us to
greater and greater speed,
and the shooting became
constant. 175 people were
left dead.
Then came the first houses of
Gebirgsneudorf, where we
were ordered to "STOP!" Here
and there, some of us began
to "eat" grass for lack of real
food. In the morning of the
third day we had to get back
on the road. We were taken
back to the coal basin of
Brnx, to the large
hydrogenation works at
Maltheuern. The Czechs
needed slave labor. We were
to be it. A new stage on our
journey of suffering awaited
us.
The "Glashntte", the old
glassworks which had been
set up as first temporary
concentration camp primarily
with the aid of immense
quantities of barbed wire,
was an ideal site for
assembly-line-style murder. It
was in an isolated location far
outside the city. Here there
were no unwanted witnesses
to the events of those days;
here none saw Death, with
whip and pistol, stalking the
darkness of the old factory
premises, flogging and
murdering as he went; here
no-one heard the screams,

the moans, and the report of

the gunshots which often put
an end, at long last, to
protracted torture. No one,
except the unfortunate
inmates themselves. And
they would be silenced
somehow, if they even
survived at all.
Some 250 prisoners were
already confined in this camp
in the very first days. Among
them were several women,
and boys hardly past school
age. Just like the men, the
women were shaved bald,
abused and kicked. It choked
my heart to hear their
screams and sobs; I will
never forget these
impressions, nor the many
others for which the term
"inhuman" is hardly adequate
to express the criminally
despicable nature of these
excesses.
But I shall speak about
Kokoff. That is what one of
our people who knew him
called him. He was the
instigator of the "great roll
call" that led up to the mass
shootings in the night of June
7, 1945. And he was himself
the most active in this gang
of murderers. Almost to a
man, the camp guards had a
passion for intimidating
people, and it only took one
look to recognize them as
bullies. And each sought to
outdo the others. Our agony

was their delight. The nighttime roll calls were

particularly feared, since the
camp guards often wanted to
provide not only themselves
but also visitors to the camp
with satanic entertainment.
Especially the Czech women
did themselves proud in this in spitting, beating and
rabble-rousing in general and the guards were only too
happy to jump into action.
The nightly "roll calls" usually
ended in gross floggings of
selected unfortunates in the
Beating Cell, whence the
bloodcurdling screams of the
tortured often rang out for
hours until they finally
dwindled to groans or deathrattles or, as in one case,
changed to inarticulate
singing because the victim
had lost his mind from all the
pain and fear - until the tiny
spark of his life ultimately
gave out altogether, to a
bullet.
When we were flogged awake
in the night of June 7, 1945,
we were expecting one of the
usual "roll calls". But when
we saw a group of uniformed
and armed strangers
crowding into the room, led
by the infamous Kokoff now
in the role of partisan leader,
we were immediately filled
with dark presentiments.
Kokoff, a typical Balkanese striking face, dark skin, a not
entirely pureblooded Czech,

as they say - was clearly in

charge. And that night Kokoff,
with his cap at a rakish angle,
a cigarette dangling
carelessly from a corner of
his mouth, and swinging his
gun, called loudly: "SS and
SA, step outside!" After the
men assembled in the
brightly lit yard, a nighttime
sport of an unusual kind
began. We saw it all from the
window of our cell, and heard
the orders, given in Czech:
"Down! Up! Squats!"
And then, horrified, we saw
how they herded one man
after the other at pistol-point
into an open space. Shots
fell, more and ever more.
That night Kokoff kept a
careful count of those who
had to face his gun. After
that act of the tragedy was
over, he bragged about
having shot 17 himself. The
next morning the guards
called for volunteers to load
up the dead bodies. A large
Wehrmacht truck with a hood
pulled up on the lawn to take
up the dead. And this
happened night after night in
the concentration camp
Glassworks near Komotau.

HOUNDER TO DEATH!
Report of Karl K., teacher and
former registrar of the South
Moravian market community

Grusbach:
"In the evening hours of May
17, 1945, partisans from outof-town got me out of bed
and took me to the
gendarmerie command post.
There, my pockets were
emptied, they even took my
eyeglasses, I was beaten up
and then thrown into a
detention cell, where I found
some companions in
misfortune. We stayed there
until May 21, 1945, on which
day we were herded on foot
to Znaim, accompanied by
armed partisans. This march
took us through Grafendorf,
Hflein, Gross Tayax,
Erdberg, Joslowitz, Zulb,
Rausenbruck and Hdnitz.
There we had a brief stopover
at the gendarmerie quarters.
Josef E. and Josef D. had to
report to the office. They
returned looking agitated.
Josef E. had an "SS" painted
on the back of his jacket in
blue paint, and Josef D. a
double "++". Then we
trekked on to Znaim, where
we arrived in the evening and
were taken to the Robotarna
prison. In one of the
basement rooms we had to
take our shirts off and lie
down on the ground with
bare upper body and
buttocks. Four partisans
flogged us mercilessly with
whips and straps. For hours
all one could hear was the
brute cursing of the partisans

and the whimpering and cries

of the tortured. Men had also
been brought in from other
parts of South Moravia, and
they fared no better than we
did. Our countryman Josef D.
must have received the
greatest part of the beatings.
When he was thrown into our
cell as the thirteenth of us,
there was no part of his body
that was not covered with
welts (back, buttocks, chest,
abdomen). He moaned
pitifully without cease and
died several hours later that
same night. Our torturers
ordered his body taken into a
different cell. The next day he
was probably thrown into the
pit that already held the
bodies of other victims who
had been beaten to death or
shot. The following day (May
22, 1945) the rest of us men
were taken under heavy
guard to the concentration
camp Mannsberg. For two
weeks Josef D.'s name was
still read out at the daily roll
call, even though they knew
perfectly well that he had
been tortured to death in the
Robotarna prison.
"Josef E. was also among the
men who had been beaten in
the Robotarna prison and had
spent the night in darkness
detention. Twice he tried to
commit suicide to spare
himself further torture, but
his fellow prisoners managed
to prevent it at the last

minute. Josef E. was then

also sent to the concentration
camp Mannsberg and was
assigned to outdoor labor at
the Ditmar earthenwares
factory. In late July 1945, due
to renewed abuse by the
Czechs, he made a third,
successful attempt at ending
his life."
IF YOUU MAKE YOURSELF A
LAMB, DON'T BE SURPRISED
WHEN THE WOLVES EAT YOU
It was in Prague during the
days of the Protectorate that
a very high-ranking state
official of North German
extraction said to me,
verbatim: "I don't understand
you Sudeten Germans, how
you couldn't get along with
the Czechs. They're
thoroughly cozy, friendly
people!"
I replied: "Well yes, Mr.
Assistant Secretary of State,
you know the Czechs from
the beer tables or even from
lavish banquets. We have
known them since the Hussite
Wars and earlier, from their
real side, from the innermost
of their complex-laden
national soul whose
bloodthirsty chauvinism is
capable of inconceivable
bestiality."
He answered, "Oh bosh, my
good man, that slander was
discredited a long time ago."

Not two years later, in May

1945, that Assistant
Secretary of State died on
Wenzel Square in Prague, tied
to a truck and dragged to
death - a victim of "cozy
Czech friendliness"

Concentration Camp
Inmate Sandor Kovac,
Hungarian, on the Czechs
in 1945
Witness statement of the
Hungarian half-Jew Sandor
Kovac, who was in a
concentration camp shortly
before the end of the War
and passed through Prague
on his way home:
"In Hitler's concentration
camp I saw things I would
not have believed possible,
that people would do to other
people. But in May 1945,
when I was traveling
homeward, I was caught
unawares in the outburst of
Czech insanity in Prague, and
I witnessed an inferno of
human depravity and moral
baseness compared to which
my concentration camp days
had almost been a holiday.
Women and children were
doused alive with petroleum
and set on fire, men were
murdered under
inconceivable tortures. And I
must make it an emphatic
point that it was the entire
population that participated

in these crimes, not just the

usual rabble. I saw stylish,
elegant young Czech ladies,
who had perhaps flirted with
the German officers not too
long before, now walking the
streets with guns and dog
whips and torturing and
murdering people, and I saw
Czech officials, evidently of
higher rank, raping women
together with the howling
Czech street mob and then
killing them as painfully as
they possibly could. I feared
a German reawakening, for
what was done to the
Germans defies description!"

CZECH CLERGYMEN
FORGET THEIR
CHRISTIAN BROTHERLY
LOVE
"What ye have done,
inasmuch as ye have done it
unto the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it
unto me!"
In 1945 many Czech
clergymen failed miserably to
live up to this well-known
Biblical teaching of our Lord
Jesus where their desperate
German co-religionists were
concerned. Unbridled,
chauvinistic Czech
nationalism took precedence
over the dissemination of the
Catholic faith and teachings
as ordered by the Church.

They maintained this attitude

towards their German coreligionists, as the following
witness accounts show. Even
the Ten Commandments were
grossly violated.
In his book _Rache nicht,
Gerechtigkeit: Geschichte
und Leidensweg der
Sudetendeutschen. Eine
Dokumentation_ (Stronsdorf:
KFM, 1989) the editor, fellowcountryman Fritz Schattauer,
recounts on page 174: "In
Jamnitz several SS men
trying to flee to Austria were
killed; the chaplain of Jamnitz
bragged about having done
that deed himself, and he
went about his pastoral
duties in Alt-Hart armed with
a submachine gun." Five
pages further, on p. 179, we
read the account of Captain
Bruno Knsel, a Sudeten
German homecomer: "There
I saw unbridled, wild
nationalism visit unutterable
suffering on innocent women,
children, elderly and soldiers.
To this day I see these
victims expelled from their
homeland. The terrible guilt,
where not even the Czech
priests shied back from
soiling their sacred vestments
with blood..."
Anton Beck, who arrived in
his hometown Cernosn, in
Mies District, on June 12,
1945 and was thrown into
prison there following gross

abuse by Czech partisans,

tells of being denied spiritual
aid (p. 189):
"Many of those imprisoned
asked for a clergyman. A
Czech priest came. He stood
by the cell door and asked
what they wanted from him.
Those that were critically ill
and already marked by Death
lifted up their arms and asked
him to take their confession,
or asked for a rosary or
prayer book. But the priest
said cynically, 'that's
forbidden for Germans...',
turned away and left."
In reports of the Church
Auxiliary in Frankfurt-amMain we read: "Unfortunately
even Church organs, even
clergymen, make no
exception to their chauvinistic
attitude towards the
Germans."
At a public assembly on June
24, 1945 in Libenec, Msgr.
Stasek, who had already
been an active member in the
First Republic's "Lidova
Strana", the Czech People's
Party, proclaimed: "The
precept of brotherly love is
void where Germans are
concerned!" And Oliva - a
clergyman and Director of
Charitable Works - was a
member of the People's Court
and frequently contributed to
unjust verdicts!

Priest Hermann Schubert of

Trautenau published his diary
from those days, and under
the date of August 7, 1945
we read: "The first
publication from the Bishop's
Palace in Kniggrtz has
arrived together with a
pastoral of the Czech
diocesan bishop Mauritius
Picha. One day this
publication may stand as
official document of the
failure of Czech Catholicism in
the time of greatest need. An
extravagant nationalism has
gripped the Czech people,
right up to the highest
ecclesiastical circles. [...]
"It is depressing that
particularly Catholic priests
and Catholic laity participate
in and approve of the
activities of the Czech
Bolshevists. The Czech
catechist Janecek in Eipel, for
example, is on the city's
expulsion committee.
Newspapers (Lidova
demokratie) and periodicals
(Novy narod) that claim to be
Christian in nature are proud
to stand at the vanguard of
the incitement against all
things German. It is a
disgrace that cries to heaven,
that two Catholic priests are
Ministers in the Bolshevist
Czech government and take
their full share of
responsibility for the
government's measures
against the Germans. Msgr.

Sramek is deputy prime

minister, Msrg. Hala is
postmaster general. [...]
"The measures being taken
against the Germans are
clearly and wholly against
natural law, against the
Divine Laws, and against all
humanity and culture. The
fact that Czech priests in
leading positions give their
approval to the dreadful
brutalities of the Czech
Revolution is one of the
saddest aspects of Czech
history."
Diary entry of August 14,
1945: "Our Czech Commissar
has arrived: Chaplain Josef
Novak, about 27 years of
age, till now chaplain in Eipel.
We soon realized that this
young priest seeks to make
up for his lack of decency and
education with arrogance.
Whenever he is suddenly
seized with another bout of
Czech fanaticism, he forgets
his office and his dignity."
August 25, 1945: "Tomorrow
there will be a Czech
celebration in the city. The
Czech chaplain wants to hoist
the national flag as well as
the Soviet flag over the
church. I had a heated
quarrel with him - the Soviet
flags stays down. At night the
rowdy mob ran the streets,
singing old Czech songs of

pilgrimage."
August 27, 1945: "We have
just learned that Dean
Clestin Baier, priest of
Merkelsdorf, was shot some
time ago by Czech soldiers. It
is said that he was made to
dig his own grave. When his
housekeeper and two other
persons, who were also to be
shot, wept and did not want
to go along, he said: 'Come
along, be calm, we're just
going home.' Not until later
did we find out that on Aug.
24, 1945, in the evening, two
Padres from the Benedictine
monastery at Braunau were
murdered by Czech soldiers:
P. Ansgard OSB and P. Alban
OSB. They were led from the
Schnau parish out into the
woods, shot, and thrown into
a shallow grave." (Report No.
50, authenticated reports of
German expellees,
Dokumentation der
Vertreibung der Deutschen
aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, ed.
Bundesministerium fr
Vertriebene, Flchtlinge und
Kriegsgeschdigte, Munich:
dtv, 1984, reprint of 1957
ed., p. 266-268.)
In an article in the SudetenPost, issue 19 of October 1,
1992, our late fellowcountryman Dr. Franz
Prachner wrote about the
Prague Cardinal Tomasek
(see also next section): "Let's
stay with the facts! At the

passing of Cardinal Tomasek I

shall permit myself to correct
the going account. For one
thing, this late prince of the
Church kept a low profile with
regard to the Communist
rulers, and kept more or less
out of sight until the end of
Communist rule, unlike his
predecessor, Cardinal
Beranek, who courageously
opposed the dictators'
wishes. Cardinal Tomasek's
words about the unjust
expulsion of the Sudeten
Germans were merely a
belated face-saving, made
after his initial statement that
'there is no cause for an
apology' had drawn
uncomfortable attention. The
old maxim of not speaking ill
of the dead must not lead to
an inversion of the facts.
Ultimately, history stands
guard that truth shall remain
truth."

THE CONDUCT OF CZECH

AND GERMAN CLERGY
DURING THE EXPULSION
OF THE SUDETEN
GERMANS IN 1945/46
After the First World War, but
already under the Monarchy
as well, the Czech clergy
exhibited markedly
nationalist, chauvinist
conduct, whereas the German
clergy acted instead in an
ecclesiastically international

manner.
In her book _Wie es wirklich
war_, Frau Anna Spangl of
Reinthal, Lower Austria,
recounts on page 6: "Since
I'm already writing of our
priest Siegmund, I shall also
mention his predecessor,
priest Vesely, a Czech. During
the First World War a bell was
removed from the church bell
tower and turned into
cannons. After the war the
district councillors decided to
have a new bell cast in
Brnn. But our worthy Pastor
Vesely refused to consecrate
it, because the inscription on
the bell was in German. So it
was blessed by a pater in
Brnn instead, and then
driven to Prittlach. For this
reason we could not hold a
consecration, just a bell
festival."
On page 70 of the same book
Frau Spangl recalls the
"Christian comfort" given her
by a Czech nun: "One time,
during my stay at the
hospital, my Mother Superior
came from the boarding
school in Grillowitz to visit
someone in the hospital. I
greeted her and told her in
tears that my father was
here, half beaten to death,
and my mother and all the
people from my home town
were in the camp and had to
endure terrible things. And
this 'worthy' nun, called by

God to her holy office,

answered me: 'It serves you
right, you've been asking for
it'!!!"
On January 11, 1990, the
Vienna newspaper Kurier
wrote on page 5: "92-yearold Frantisek Tomasek also
sees no need for an apology.
The resettlement of the
Germans, who had incurred
guilt towards us, was
justified."!
Clergymen were also
represented in the first Czech
government after the Second
World War, namely: Msgr. Dr.
Jan Sramek as deputy prime
minister and Msgr. Frantisek
Hala as postmaster general.
Both bear full responsibility
for the brutal expulsion of
innocent and defenseless
Germans. Both approved the
laws in question with their
signatures. It is a grave error
to believe that the Czech
Communists alone can be
held responsible for the
expulsion with all its terrible
consequences. They were not
able to wield absolute power
until after the putsch of 1948.
Two accounts speak
eloquently of the attitude and
actions of the Czechs of those
days:
"One of our countrymen who
had been sentenced to
several years' imprisonment

had to do slave labor in the

quarry of Waltrowitz
(Valtrovice). The supervisor
there said: 'Our bishop of
Prague, Beranek, recently
declared: if a Czech comes to
me and confesses to having
killed a German, I absolve
him immediately!!!!'
"A woman from a South
Moravian market community
told me, after having
returned from the upheavals
of the war, that her parish
priest had said to her,
verbatim: 'Frau G., you'll
never see your husband
again, he's already in
Siberia!' (Solace offered by
the Church...)
"I can take both statements
on my oath. To protect family
members still living, full
names have not been given
here."

WOUNDED AS LIVING
TORCHES
In his book _Das Ende an der
Elbe_, Jrgen Thorwald
summarizes the situation
thus:
In the first days of May 1945
a deceptive calm pervaded
the region of the
Protectorate. All the streets
were jammed with the
wretched columns of refugees
from the East. Tens of

thousands of wounded were

squeezed by train or truck
columns into this region
which still appeared to be a
last safe haven.
As early as the time when the
German Eastern front had
collapsed outside Berlin and
along the Oder River, the
German state minister in
Bohemia and Moravia, SSObergruppenfhrer Frank,
had considered turning power
over to a Czech national
government, but Hitler had
forbidden it. Now the rapid
advance of the Americans
offered the Sudeten Germans
significant hope. The people
feared the Russians; no one
thought that the dreadful fate
which awaited the Sudeten
Germans would not even
emanate from the Soviets at
all.
Even those Germans that
knew the dark, unpredictable,
strange and explosive Czech
character never dreamed that
anything worse would happen
to them than having to live
under Czech rule again. Since
not so much as one single
Czech had been expelled or
expropriated during the years
of the Protectorate, no one
expected a storm of
vengeance.
And in fact nothing did
happen - until May 5, 1945.
But the Americans in their

utter blindness let the Soviets

persuade them to halt at the
Karlsbad-Pilsen-Budweis line
and to leave the "liberation"
of Czechoslovakia to the
Bolsheviks.
But even if the Americans
had marched on, they would
have afforded the Sudeten
Germans no protection. In
those areas where the
Americans did later occupy
the land, they did not so
much as lift a finger to
prevent the torrent of
bestiality vented on the
Sudeten Germans. The
majority of the GIs watched
the mass murder with
equanimity. These soldiers,
propagandized into a gross
hatred of all things German,
regarded the physical
extermination of the Sudeten
Germans as an act of just
punishment: let's get rid of
these damned Germans once
and for all.
On May 5, while the units of
Field Marshal Ferdinand
Schrner still stemmed the
tide of the Soviet advance in
eastern Czechoslovakia, the
Communists in Prague
proceeded to get the masses
moving. In the morning hours
they started the rumor that
American tanks were already
standing at the western
outskirts of Prague. It was a
bluff, of course; after all, the
duped Americans had halted

a hundred kilometers farther

east. But the rumor was all it
took to unleash
pandemonium. Immediately,
Czech and Red flags
appeared in the windows, and
the citizens of Prague rushed
into the streets to greet the
Americans. Songs of
nationalism burst forth.
At first the German soldiers
and the police watched
helplessly. But then
something possessed Frank
to order the streets cleared
and noncompliant persons
shot. A mad order, it may
seem today. But one must
consider that Schrner's units
yet fought in the east of
Prague and that their rear
field was to be kept clear.
Only some of the German
troops obeyed Frank's orders.
But it sufficed to clear the
streets in some parts of the
city, and to ready artillery
and machine guns; the Czech
masses, believing the
American tanks to be at the
ready behind them, suddenly
went on the offensive after
Communist combat groups
seized power. Every German
soldier found in the streets
was lynched. Smaller German
offices were stormed and
their staff butchered. German
homes were plundered, their
owners abused, beaten to
death or thrown out the
windows. Piles of bodies lined

the streets. Armed

Communists had killed the
small guard posted at the
radio station, and now began
to broadcast an orgy of
hatred into the ether.
Accounts of murders allegedly
committed by German
soldiers were broadcast
incessantly, peppered with
calls for revenge and payback. The danse macabre of
Prague began. In Wenzel
Square, wounded German
soldiers were hung from lamp
posts, and fires were lit
beneath these unfortunates
so that they died a gruesome
death as living torches.

THE DANSE MACABRE

BEGAN IN PRAGUE
By the afternoon of May 5,
most of the minimally staffed
German offices in Prague had
been stormed. Larger
Wehrmacht offices and the
barracks were the only ones
that could still hold their own.
A group of German soldiers,
gathered together by a
resolute Captain, defended
Masaryk Train Station where
thousands of German
refugees and wounded had
taken cover.

Pankraz prison near Prague

was to become
the torture hell of death for
countless Germans.
A gruesome fate caught up
with thousands of wounded in
several hospitals. After these
hospitals were stormed by
the mob, the bed-ridden
wounded were shot in their
beds. But even those who
were able to walk, and who
had gone out that day, were
lost. Any soldier found by
himself was beaten to death
or hung. Thousands of
wounded who had been
rounded up from various
hospitals were gathered
together at the Scharnhorst
barracks, and mowed down
by submachine gun fire.
In the night of May 5-6
posters were hung on
buildings and advertising
columns: "Nemcum smrt!"
Death to the Germans! At the
same time the radio station
ceaselessly exhorted the
Czechs to wipe out the
Germans. Their homes were

systematically plundered.
Many inhabitants were
thrown out the windows or
beaten to death, but
thousands more were
crowded into basements and
improvised prisons and
abused horribly.
With tanks and raiding
parties, the centers of
German resistance attempted
to prevent the massacres of
the German civilians, at least
in their immediate vicinity.
However, the Czechs
thwarted these efforts to stop
their advance by herding
naked German women and
girls ahead of them as living
"anti-tank obstacles".

Prague, May 1945: Germans

as slave-labor road crews.
The forced laborers were
often at the mercy of acts of
violence from the vicious
mob.
In countless places in the city
women had been herded
through the streets wholly

unclothed, urged on with

clubbings and whip lashings.
They were forced to tear
down barricades and to
gather up dead bodies to be
transported off. Often these
violated women had to throw
their own relatives into mass
graves. The rounding-up of
the Germans proceeded
systematically, in that the
landlords were required to
report all German tenants,
who had been declared
outlawed.
The Germans of Prague who
were already rounded up on
this May 5th already got their
first taste of the tortures in
store for them on their way
to the movie theaters and
schools where they were to
be interned. Gatherings of
Czechs from all social classes
were waiting for them in the
streets. The arrested
Germans - men, women and
children alike - had to run the
gauntlet through the streets.
They were attacked with
stones, canes, umbrellas and
even with boiling water. Arms
raised, they staggered on.
Women were yanked out of
the groups they were in and
dragged into the nearest
houses and other buildings.
Whoever wanted to could
rape them. Nurses were
stripped naked and publicly
violated. The women's heads
were shorn bald with paper
scissors. Their faces were

painted. Their clothes were

torn off their bodies, and
swastikas were painted on
their backs and breasts. They
were raped by the thousands.
Many were forced to open
their mouths so that their
torturers could urinate into
them.
Elsewhere one could see
naked women being forced to
wipe up the pavement on
their knees. Hundreds of
Germans were driven into the
underground sewers of
Wenzel Square, where they
stood crowded so tightly
together that none could
even move their arms.
But these torments were
harmless compared with what
was yet to come. The worst
fate struck those uniformed
soldiers who fell into Czech
hands alone outside Prague.
Those who were simply shot
were the lucky ones. Many
were tortured to death,
hanged, drowned in cesspools
and rolled to death in barrels.
In Prague itself, this day saw
the first mass execution of
civilians, in which an evergrowing part of the
population participated either
actively or as spectators.
These were the same people
who up till then had been the
most servile lackeys of the
German machinery of war.
But all that was only the
beginning of the apocalypse

of horror that descended

upon the Germans of the
Sudetenland.

RUSSIANS CAME IN
GERMAN UNIFORMS
On May 6 the tempest was
interrupted. The radio had
announced that General
Vlasov's troops, stationed
near Prague, would beat the
Germans down in Prague. It
was known that in 1943
Vlasov had recruited an army
of Russian prisoners-of-war in
order to fight against the
Soviet regime. He now knew
himself lost, and came to a
fateful decision.
As early as March 1945
Vlasov had sent trusted
officers on secret missions to
the British and the
Americans. They were
suppose to make them
understand that the hundred
thousand Russians who
fought on the German side
were no Fascists, no slaves to
the Germans, no vassals, but
rebels against Soviet tyranny.
Most of all, they were to warn
the Western powers of
Moscow's unchanged goals,
which were still geared
towards world domination.
But their message fell on deaf
ears. Vlasov's envoys were
not even granted an

audience. They were arrested

and later handed over to the
Soviet executors. After all,
the war was not in fact fought
for the cause of human
rights. Only the Germans
were to be wiped out.
But Vlasov did not know that.
He, like many millions in
Germany, indulged in the
illusion that the Western
democracies crusading
against the National Socialists
would not permit the mass
murderer Stalin and the
Bolshevist movement to
advance their power right to
the heart of Europe after
Germany was destroyed.
Vlasov was firmly convinced
that a confrontation between
East and West must be in the
offing. And that was the
battle in which he intended to
deploy his units, who had
nothing on Earth left to lose.
He hoped that the Western
powers would give him the
backing which he had failed
to gain from the Germans,
who were no longer in a
position to equip the one
million Russian soldiers whom
Vlasov wanted to lead against
the Bolshevists.
And thus, on May 6, 1945, he
marched his First Division
into Prague, where they were
to join the fighting on the
Czech side and to reestablish
order in Prague.

The division marched into

Prague in German uniforms,
in German steel helmets, and
wearing St. Andrew's cross
on their sleeves. And the
Czechs, pausing for a
moment in their blood frenzy,
virtually swamped them with
flowers, while the streets
everywhere were yet littered
with the bodies of the
Germans they had murdered.
And in part Vlasov's men did
not disappoint the Czechs.
The Russians fought, grimly
and cruelly at times, against
the SS, who in turn were
fighting for their lives. But in
part they also helped
wherever they could. They
helped many of their German
prisoners to escape.
One tragedy was the fate of
the young SS members who
fell to the last man in Prague
- butchered or hanged from
lamp posts. Most of them
were young ethnic Germans
from the south-east who had
been conscripted into the
units of the Waffen-SS. Now
they reluctantly wore, and
died in, the uniform in which
they could expect no mercy,
however blameless they
were. The intervention of
Vlasov's troops no doubt
hastened the smothering of
German resistance in Prague.
Vlasov had hoped that his
intervention would preserve
Prague from protracted
battles and great destruction.

With his show of good will he

wanted to establish a liaison
with the Western Allies,
whom he believed to be even
then marching on Prague.
A tragic mistake. Americans
did come, but it was only a
reconnaissance unit that
immediately withdrew again
to Pilsen when it saw that the
situation of the Germans in
Prague was already hopeless.
Before his departure the
American commanding officer
told the commander of
Vlasov's division that he
should just await the arrival
of the Soviet army, and keep
the peace in Prague until
then.
This "recommendation of
suicide" exemplifies the
shocking political naivet that
determined the Americans'
course of action with regard
to the Soviets in those days.

A cheering crowd greets the

Americans in Pilsen.
At their feet in the gutter - a
murdered German.

THE "CRUSADERS" AS
MASS MURDERERS
When General Bunichenko,
the commanding officer of
Vlasov's troops, realized that
the Americans had no
intention of occupying
Prague, he knew that this
was the death sentence for
the anti-Communist Russian
army of liberation. In the
morning of May 7 he and his
regiments left Prague for
Beraun. The division had
sustained many losses and
many wounded, and was now
caught in the maelstrom of
the retreat of Vlasov's army.
On learning that Soviet tank
units had broken through
Schrner's front and were
advancing on Prague from the
north-east, Vlasov
immediately departed
westward.
On their way, three Generals
traveling alone had been
stopped and arrested by the
Czechs. They were handed
over to the Soviets some few
days later. The bulk of the
troops, however, reached the
American lines - and now
there began an infernal game
of treacherousness and
American inhumanity. The
anti-Communist troops were
disarmed, and left in the
belief that they were now in

safety with these "crusaders

for democracy". But then
they were encircled by
American tanks, and at 11:00
a.m. on May 13th American
officers informed General
Bunichenko that he and his
regiments had until 3:00
p.m. to march off to the East.
The Russians knew what that
meant. They tried to break
out on all sides, but the
Americans had formed an
iron ring of tanks around the
Russian freedom fighters and
ensured, by means of a
terrible manhunt, that the
bulk of these unfortunates
were herded towards the
Soviets, who were already
waiting for their prey.
The Americans rounded up
the members of the Russian
officers' school and the
reserves in Southern
Germany and Austria and
drove them together in the
camps Plattling, Fssen,
Kempten and Linz. There
were mass suicides and
indescribable scenes of
despair, but the "crusaders"
handed all of them, to the
last man, over to the Soviets.
Treachery was also used to
put General Vlasov's head on
the block. He had first been
taken to Castle
Schlsselberg, where
American officers
interrogated him for days. He

found new hope, described to

the Americans the satanic
system of Communism, and
told them what would happen
if Moscow were to succeed in
making half of Europe
Communist. He told the
Americans that Bolshevik
imperialism was much more
dangerous than the might of
the Germans whom they had
just destroyed.
But evidently this did not
impress the officers, and if it
did, it was useless, for it was
the insiders in Washington
and the Roosevelt
Administration that
determined the overall line
taken.
In the second half of May
Vlasov was asked to come
attend a discussion. The
Americans had rigged the
whole thing with the Soviets.
On their way to the
"discussion", Vlasov and his
15 officers suddenly found
themselves facing the
muzzles of NKVD submachine
guns.
Vlasov and twelve of his
officers were publicly hanged
on Red Square in Moscow in
1946.
Vlasov's troops were not the
only anti-Communist fighters
that were delivered to the
Soviet knife. In Austria the
Cossack troops were driven

to death. In England 33,000

Russians who had been
volunteers with the
Organization Todt and were
captured during the invasion
were forcibly "repatriated" to
the Soviet Union, there to be
hanged.
What was it that Eisenhower
had called the Americans:
"crusaders"? "Christian
soldiers" was Churchill's term
for the armies that fought
against Germany. In fact they
were accomplices of the
Antichrist, of Stalin the
Butcher.

A MILLION MEN SENT

INTO HELL
But the Russians were not the
only ones to be delivered to
the knife. While Prague was
already the site of shootings,
lynchings and torture, the
three armies of Schrner's
unit still fought in the east of
Czechoslovakia. In the
evening of May 8, 1945, the
First Armored Unit - bled
white, but still fighting
valiantly on - halted along the
Brnn-Olmtz-Mhrisch
Schnberg line.
When the divisions learned
that an armistice had been
ordered, they turned west to
try to put distance between
themselves and the Soviets.

200 kilometers lay between

the German rearguard on the
March River and the
Bohemian Forest, where the
Americans stood; 200
kilometers separated them
from the troops which, in
their view, were not the
enemy. The German soldiers
coming from the East hoped
that a certain common
ground among western
civilized peoples would unite
them against Bolshevik
barbarism, whose horrors
they had come to know up
close. At the very least, the
armies that had thrown
themselves as bulwark
against the deadly avalanche
from the East right to the
final hour hoped that the
Americans would take them
prisoner, which was still to be
preferred to Soviet captivity.
Fully a million soldiers clung
to this last hope while
pouring westward through
the chaotic land, pursued by
the Soviets and ambushed by
Czech snipers. Time and
again the rearguard columns
were overrun by Soviet tanks
advancing from behind. But
the others who escaped the
tanks of the Red Army
ultimately also marched into
disaster. Ahead of them in the
West, the American lines
were closed to them in a
hostile wall. Wherever the
privates encountered the
Americans they were

generally given a hostile

reception. In fact they were
frequently received with open
hatred, and with scornful
jeering that the Nazis would
not manage to escape from
the scene of their "crimes".
Once again America
propaganda had made the
Germans seem to be
monsters without exception.
Generals who tried to make
contact with American staffs
met with a cold lack of
understanding. The
commanding officers were
under orders to use whatever
means it took, even armed
force, to prevent any
westward march of the
German army. And they did
so with terrible precision.
In this way the Americans
sent almost one million into
the hell of Soviet captivity. It
is impossible to describe the
fate of the young women
assistants to the armed
forces, the Red Cross nurses,
and the Luftwaffe assistants.
Many of them were raped to
death.
The only privates to escape
were those who managed to
slip through loopholes alone
or in small groups, and fled
through the woods into the
West. But only a few
thousand really got away.
Most of them fell into the
hands of dehumanized
Czechs and were tortured to

death. Those who were

beaten to death quickly, or
even handed over to the
Soviets, were the lucky ones.
Thousands upon thousands
vanished without a trace in
those days and weeks. Their
murderers still live - they
were all young people in
those days - but their
conscience is dead.
Entire divisions were
massacred, and no one
knows of their fate. The end
of the heavy mortar division
534 is known only because
one single man escaped.
Ludwig Breyer: "We were on
our way to the Americans. At
Melnik Bridge a 'friendly'
Czech major promised us
safe-conduct if we would lay
down our arms. We trusted
him, and did so. There were
318 of us, and now we also
had to hand over all our
valuables and march to the
town Liebeznice in rows of
five. Once the entire column
was on the main street,
gunfire burst from all the
houses. I got away because I
was at the end of the column.
The dead had fallen in heaps
in the street. I have heard
that all the wounded were
later murdered, with bullets
into the back of the neck.
"This mass murder must have
been carefully planned. Our
marching column had
obviously been announced

before we arrived. The major

had only had the task of
deceiving us and persuading
us to give up our weapons."

Germans are expelled on foot

after the end of the war.

PRAGUE: SEA OF
INHUMANITY
Meanwhile, hell began for
the Germans in Prague.
Jrgen Thorwald wrote:
"When the Germans who had
been herded into the Ruzyn
prison in Prague on May 6
and 7 gathered their children
up from the floor where they
had collapsed from
exhaustion, and were led
outside in the morning of May
9, they did not know that
they had not yet passed
through even the outer
reaches of the hell to come.
"Nevertheless many of them
were already so exhausted
that they wished for their
tormentors to simply pull the
triggers of those pistols with
which they had already been
beaten and threatened so

often. Now they were

supposed to go into the city
to tear down barricades.
"But even before they were
lined up to be marched off,
some of those who happened
to stand near the gates got a
taste of what lay in store for
them. Trucks loaded with
wounded German soldiers
suddenly drove into the yard.
Wretched figures were among
the human cargo, pictures of
human suffering and
forlornness. They still wore
blood-soaked bandages. And
the faces of the doctors and
nurses accompanying them
showed such a degree of
horror that the Germans in
the yard shuddered. They did
not know what was
happening even then in many
hospitals. They did not know
that Czech men and women
were throwing wounded out
of their beds, beating to
death and throttling helpless
victims, castrating them or
drowning them in their wash
bowls. Or that they were
throwing them into sheds or
garages or loading them onto
trucks, and in some places
were even laying them on the
street so that mounted
soldiers could ride over them.
"While the wounded were still
standing pale and frightened
beside the truck they had
come in, a group of rioters
that had been lurking in the

yard pounced on them,

snatched away their crutches,
canes and bandages, beat
them to the ground and
proceeded to pound away at
them with clubs, rails and
hammers until they lay
unmoving in their blood.

Germans are led to run the

gauntlet. Note that the Czech
"RG" (Revolutionary Guard)
are wearing German helmets.
"Were they still human, those
beings on Wenzel and Karls
Square and in the Rittergasse
who on May 9 doused
Germans with gasoline, hung
them by their feet from poles
and lamp posts and set them
on fire, and then laughed and
howled and cheered to their
agony, which lasted all the
longer because the victims
had been deliberately hung
head-down so the rising
smoke could not suffocate
them? Were they still human,
those beings who took
German soldiers, but also
civilians and women, tied
them together with barbed

wire, shot them and then

threw the bundles of people
into the Moldau River? Were
they still human, those
beings who drowned German
children in the tubs of water
intended for putting out fires,
and who pitched women and
children out the windows into
the streets? They had human
faces. But they were no
longer human.
"They were not human, those
beings who indiscriminately
bludgeoned any and every
German they got hold of until
he or she collapsed. They
were not human, those
beings who forced naked
German women to clear out
rocks, who cut their Achilles
tendons and reveled in their
helplessness. No, they were
no longer human, those
beings who dragged the
Germans out of the
underground sewers of
Wenzel Square, clubbed them
to the ground and literally
trampled them to death, and
they were not humans who
took the German girls, the
Wehrmacht assistants who
had fallen into their hands,
stripped them of their
clothes, and herded them
through Fachoba Street
towards the Wolschaner
cemetery, where they
machine-gunned them, or
clubbed and stabbed others
so that they sought refuge in
piles of hay, which the

howling torturers promptly

set on fire.
"And these were only a few
high points in the sea of
inhumanity in which a simple
shooting - even if it was the
shooting of hundreds of
students in Prague's Adolf
Hitler School - seemed
merciful."

WE KISSED THE ROTTING

CORPSES
Not all Sudeten Germans
went through the inferno of
unbridled brutality. The
pandemonium was localized.
After the first outburst of
blood thirst, it was the
concentration camps that
became hell on earth. The
volume Dokumente zur
Austreibung der
Sudetendeutschen represents
a sober record of the
statements given by
survivors of these camps. The
following are some highlights
- screams from hell.
Hilde Hurtinger (Prague): "On
May 5, 1945 a Czech mob
took me from my home and,
beating and clubbing me all
the while, dragged me by the
hair some 500 meters into
the Scharnhorst School,
where I was grossly abused.
"The following night all the
prisoners there were

repeatedly called into the

yard. After that, random
groups of ten women, men
and children each were
assembled and shot. I
watched my two brothers and
one of their children die like
that. The child was only five
months old.
"Then we had to dig graves,
undress the bodies and bury
them. Random shots were
taken at the prisoners at
other times as well, day and
night. One such time a bullet
grazed my neck. I stayed
where I lay under the corpses
for a whole day and night
because I did not dare get
up. Then Revolutionary
Guardsmen stepped over the
bodies and blindly stabbed
any who still lived with their
bayonets. My left hand was
impaled in the process.
"In separation we got nothing
at all to eat. Children were
given spittoons as 'meals'.
"Armed Czech women
dragged pregnant prisoners
from the cells and out into
the yard, where they stripped
and beat them, then stuffed
them into latrines and beat
them until their bellies burst.
I myself had to help carry off
the bodies of the women who
had died that way. During the
day groups of six to eight
women were taken to work in
St. Gotthard Church. There

we had to kiss the dead

bodies that were already
rotting, pile them up, and
clean the church floor of the
blood that ran there by
getting down on our knees
and licking it up by mouth. A
Czech mob supervised this
work and beat us. On May 20
we were led into Wenzel
Square where German boys
and girls, and soldiers too,
were hung alive by their feet
from lamp posts and trees
and, in front of our very eyes,
were doused with petroleum
and set on fire."
Physicist Dr. K. F., who was
beaten half to death and
imprisoned in a basement,
recalls: "The afternoon of
May 10 brought me what was
perhaps the most gruesome
experience of all those days.
A troop of armed men came
in and selected the six
youngest and strongest of us.
I was one of them. After they
had promised our guard that
they would bring us back
alive if possible, they led us
to Wenzel Square. It was
packed with a roaring,
howling crowd and they had
to clear a way for us first.
"Thus we arrived at the
junction of Wassergasse
street, where we saw the job
that awaited us: from the
large advertising billboard at
this corner hung three naked
corpses, suspended from the

feet and burned with

gasoline. The faces were
mutilated beyond recognition,
all the teeth knocked out, the
mouths just bloody holes.
The roasted skin stuck to our
hands. We had to carry them
into Stefansgasse Street, and
drag them when we could no
longer carry. A passer-by
tried to photograph our
procession, but he was seen
and beaten half to death.
"When we had put the bodies
down we were forced to kiss
them on the mouth. We were
told, 'To jsou prece vasi
bratri, ted' je polibejte!'
('They're your brothers, now
kiss them!') I still hear these
words as though they had
been said today. No matter
how revolting it was, staying
alive was more important,
and so we squeezed our lips
together and pressed them
into the bloody ooze that
represented their mouths. To
this day I can feel the icecold heads in my hands.
"The following night, the five
men who had been on Wenzel
Square with me were shot.
Only dead men could tell no
tales. I owe my life to one
Czech who let me get away."

MASS MURDER BY
WOMEN WITH
SUBMACHINE GUNS

German privates were also

shot and beaten to death en
masse in those days. One
homecomer, Eduard Flach,
reports:
"On August 9, 1945, 18 men
in our camp were discovered
to have been marked with the
'SS rune'. They had not been
volunteer SS men, but ethnic
Germans who had been
drafted into the SS. All of
them were very young
fellows.
"These eighteen prisoners-ofwar now had to stand up, one
beside the other, with their
faces towards a wooden
barracks. The Czech guards
and soldiers now beat them
on their bare backs with iron
bars and rifle butts until they
collapsed into bleeding
heaps. As the prisoners lay
moaning on the ground, the
Czechs pulled them up again
and threw cold water on
them. To this day I still see
vividly how the fingers of
several prisoners were
smashed with heavy cudgel
blows. This abuse of
unparalleled brutality went on
for about two hours, until
darkness fell. At that point we
were allowed to go, and the
unconscious prisoners were
dragged into the soldier camp
- which was separated from
the actual prison camp by a
barbed wire fence - and there

the beating continued. They

could no longer even scream,
only whimper. Again they
were revived with water, and
only then did the Czechs put
them out of their misery with
a bullet."
Another private, Hans
Freund, recalls:
"I myself witnessed the
following scene on Sparta
Square in Prague. We were
marched past the sports field,
and after the order to 'halt'
we were told to surrender our
German military passbooks.
About 50 men handed their
passbooks over; about 300
men, including myself, did
not. The 50 who had obeyed
were herded onto the sports
field and lined up facing a
wall. The gates were closed,
and the 50 men were mowed
down from two sides with
submachine guns operated by
two women.
"When the prisoners were
transferred into the custody
of the Russian military, one
Czech lieutenant, Jara
Prochazka, was shot by a
Soviet officer for wanting to
maltreat us."
A Carinthian police officer
who had served in the
Estonian Legion reports:
"Together with eleven
comrades I attempted to

escape from Czechoslovakia

via Hirschberg. But some
Czechs caught us. It was not
the usual practice to take
small groups prisoner. They
were simply gunned down.
But we were lucky to be in
the immediate vicinity of a
camp where more than 1,400
prisoners were already being
held. We were shoved in with
the rest, and then they
herded us off to Prague. On
the run. Anyone who could
run no longer dropped in
their tracks. Then we would
hear a shot behind us. The
first to be shot were the older
comrades, the Blitzmdchen girls who had been assistants
to the Wehrmacht - and the
nurses, and our group shrank
and shrank. We suffered
raging thirst, but anyone who
tried to get near a well or
fountain was shot down. Of
our group of more than 1,400
people, only a few hundred
made it to Prague alive, and
there we were handed over to
the Russians. After our
release from Russian captivity
we again fell into Czech
hands in Bodenbach in
autumn 1945.
"At the train station the
Czech railway people fell on
us with iron bars and
spanners and beat those at
the fringes of our group into
a terrible state. Later, in the
train station building, we
were asked which of us were

able to speak a foreign

language. Several spoke up.
They were led outside, and
right away we heard the
bursts of gunfire that killed
them.
"The admissions procedure at
Brx consisted of having to
bend over a trestle and being
horribly beaten by several
torturers. If someone lost
control over his bowels during
the beating, the rest of us
had to eat his feces if we did
not wish to be gunned down.
Abuse was the order of the
day later on as well. One
night the commanding officer
arrived, together with a dog.
A priest and I had to crawl in
a circle while the dog literally
tore our buttocks to pieces.
"I went through horrible
things. But to this day it still
tears at my heartstrings to
recall the 13- or 14-year-old
boy who was murdered
before our eyes with a bullet
into the back of his neck
because, weakened as he
was by hunger and
exhaustion, he had been a
tiny bit late at roll call."
Walter Fillafer of Klagenfurt
recalls a scene from a Czech
concentration camp:
"A tall blond Czech girl about
17 years of age was playfully
swinging a submachine gun
hanging over her shoulder.

Suddenly she snapped the

gun down, pulled the trigger
and emptied her entire
magazine into the crowd of
soldiers waiting to march-off.
I was unharmed and heard
the order: whoever can
move, gather at the edge of
the woods. Anyone who tries
to tend the wounded will be
shot.
"Germans who were caught
alone or in small groups had
no chance of surviving. They
were shot or beaten to death
on the spot. Fusilier
commandos overpowered the
starved and defenseless
privates and strung them
from the trees."

50,000 WATCHED THE

EXECUTIONS
On Sunday, May 13, 1945,
near noon, Czech President
Dr. Eduard Benes arrived in
Prague. Rows of German
people were set on fire as
living torches in his honor.
The following is from the
account of Dr. Hans Wagner,
physician, who - almost by a
miracle - was still at liberty
that day. On May 14 he too
was arrested. He witnessed
the following:

The public execution of

German university professor
Dr. Josef Pfitzner of Prague on
Pankraz Square
on September 6, 1945 was
turned into Czech public
entertainment.
"In the Altstdter Ring the
sooty rubble of the gutted
city hall and of several
private homes stood out
against the sky. From the
wrought-iron company signs
of the 'Usvatho Havla', a
well-known restaurant
opposite the city theater,
dangled the half-charred
remains of German soldiers,
hung feet-up. One of the
bodies was missing its right
arm all the way up to the
armpit - he had obviously
been an amputee.
"Shouting and yelling carried
over from the main gate of
Wilson Train Station. I saw
that a blonde woman was
being attacked by the crowd,
even though she defended

herself in Czech and without

any accent. In a trice she was
surrounded, the clothes were
torn off her body, and already
she lay naked and covered in
blood on the pavement,
where she was beaten
further. At that point a heavy
beer wagon drove past, and
in a great commotion the
crowd unhitched the horses.
One was tied to each leg of
the prostrated woman and
then urged in opposite
directions. The body was torn
apart; the woman screamed
horribly before she died.
"One Sunday afternoon the
Revolutionary Guard invaded
one of the double cells in our
block, where 25 boys aged 14
to 16 were housed. These
boys were from the
Reichenberg area and were
accused of having been
'werewolves'. As we could
hear from the orders given,
the boys were lined up
outside the door in rows of
two, facing each other. First
they had to enact a children's
hopping game, after which
they were ordered to shout
'Heil Hitler' and to box each
other's ears. Both male and
female spectators urged them
on, and not only with rubber
truncheons. This 'game'
escalated into bloodshed; the
boys then had to lick the
blood off the stone floor. If
one refused, he was beaten
for it. Some of these children

became sick to their

stomachs, and the others
were forced to eat their
vomit. Then they were forced
to strip to their skin, and one
after the other had to lie on a
table where they were
flogged until the flesh hung in
shreds from their bodies. All
the while their torturers
indulged in the most dirty
and stupid jokes imaginable.
When all the boys had been
thus tortured, they were
dragged into the basement,
and those that still gave any
sign of life were strung up on
hooks on the wall, and
liquidated.

SS-man being led to his

execution.
"The Czech security guard
Cink from the automobile and
airplane factory Walter in
Jinonitz near Prague lay ill in
my cell. He ran a raging
fever. Diagnosis: kidney
disease. One night he fell out
of bed, delirious, and
remained lying unconscious

on the floor. When I pulled

the blanket off his bunk to
cover him up, the toilet
stench from his cot almost
knocked me over. Neither
urine bottle nor night pot had
been provided for him, so
that all his body wastes had
remained where they
happened to fall. Dying, he
was taken to the General
Hospital.
"One beautiful September
evening there was a
tremendous uproar on the
square outside the Pankraz
Palace of Justice. That part of
the square which I was able
to observe from my window
(though I had been forbidden
to do so) was jam-packed
with automobiles and
pedestrians, mothers came
pushing their prams and even
the school-age children
climbed up on the roofs of
the cars. Suddenly a
seemingly endless torrent of
applause burst out: Professor
Dr. Josef Pfitzner, mayor of
Prague, was being hung on
the middle of three tall
gallows that were set up on a
black-draped podium.
"Pfitzner was followed by a
number of other well-known
persons. The execution show
lasted for hours. 50,000
Czechs watched insatiably."

FIRST TORTURED, THEN

SHOT IN THE GRAVE

With raised hands the
German men of Landskron
had to appear before a
Revolutionary Tribunal on
May 17, 1945, recounts Julius
Friedel. "The first in each row
had to carry a portrait of
Hitler, covered with phlegm
and bloody spit, and the next
in line had to lick it clean
when ordered to do so.
"The last 20 to 30 steps to
the Judges' table had to be
traversed by the men on their
knees. Here each was told
what his sentence would be.
And then a terrible running of
the gauntlet began; many
were drowned in the
firefighting pond. Karl Piffl,
master carpenter, was
dragged out of the pond
again half-dead, and was
then literally beaten to death
and trampled to mush.
"Foreman Reichstdter was
beaten beyond recognition,
stood up against the wall of
the city hall, and shot.
Running out of the alley that
led to the prison, driven on
by howling Czechs, came
engineer Josef Neugebauer,
streaming with blood. He too
died facing the wall of the city
hall with hands raised - felled
by a hail of bullets from
submachine guns. Engineer
Otto Dietrich died the same

way. Peasant farmer Viktor

Benes died there too after the
top of his skull had been shot
off. And those were only the
people I knew personally.
"The cries of agony of the
bleeding people soon
drowned out everything else.
The dead lay piled
everywhere.
"On May 18 those who still
survived were again herded
together in the city square.
The most horrible tortures
continued. After his share of
the torture, master plumber
Josef Jurenka had to place
the noose around his own
neck, to be hung from a gas
street lamp.
"Robert Schwab, an official
from Ober-Johnsdorf, died
similarly. The other Germans
had to keep the bodies of
these two hanged men
constantly in swinging
motion. Engineer Khler, who
was originally from Germany,
was stabbed with walkingcanes, to the gleeful howling
of the mob. All day long the
normally quite city square
rang with dreadful cries and
screams. After that day, mass
suicides of Germans began
throughout the District."
Regarding Komotau, Ottokar
Kremen reports:
"The soldiers from the SS

were tortured horribly. Those

who had already been beaten
twice or even three times had
festering wounds. The pus
soaked through their shirts
and jackets. The backs of
these poor people were
crawling with flies and stank
dreadfully. They were put
separately in a small room
called 'Marodka'. Once eight
to ten were in 'Marodka',
these battered people who
could barely move had to dig
a hole two meters deep and
60 cm wide. In the evening,
when the hole was finished,
they were forced to stand up
beside it and the first of them
had to lie down in the hole
(grave), and not until he was
in it was he shot from above.
The second man had to lie
down on the first body and
was also shot from above,
and in this way it continued
until the grave was stacked
full. One time there was still
some room left over for one
more, and so they got a
woman, 67 years of age,
whose hair had been cut off.
She had been tortured, but
still refused to tell where her
son was. She had to lie down
on top of the bodies. Then
she too was killed.
"Words fail me to describe
the appearance of those
people who had been beaten
twice. I saw a member of the
Waffen-SS who had already
endured two beatings. Aside

from his body, which was

battered to a pulp, his private
parts had swollen by about 8
or 9 cm in diameter, they
were wholly suffused with
blood and the testicles were
beginning to fester; right to
the anus everything was full
of pus, and he stank horribly.
Every day more and more
people joined the ranks of
these unfortunates. The
'Strz bezpecnosti' brought
the people into the camp
already half-dead.
"And then came the day of
the mass murders in
Postelberg. Large groups, up
to 80 men at a time, were
gathered up and marched
out. The men knew what was
in store for them. They strode
upright and with stony faces
past those who remained
behind. Not one begged for
his life."

GRUESOME "CZECH
COCKTAIL"
Jan Kouril is probably the
only Czech who has been
called to account for his
crimes. He was recognized
and arrested in 1951 in
Karlsruhe, and sentenced to
15 years' imprisonment.
The indictment stated, "Kouril
was the terror of the Kaunitz
camp. Beatings and tortures

took place on his orders, and

prisoners were forced to drink
pus and urine out of
buckets." Prisoners were
hauled up and down a
gallows as public
entertainment. Others were
branded with a red-hot iron.
In the interrogation room one
witness was pushed face-first
into a full bedpan while
having to sing the German
national anthem. The camp's
former gravedigger later
testified that in the course of
his work there he had carted
off the bodies of about 1,800
Germans who had been hung
or beaten to death.
And another witness,
speaking of Postelberg,
reports: "What took place in
the large square is beyond
human imagination. Here one
is boxed about the ears,
there another is being kicked;
here a dog is set on some
prisoners, there some are
beaten with truncheons on
their bare buttocks, and next
to them, other prisoners are
forced to beat each other
with canes, while guards look
on to make sure that the
blows are not perchance too
gentle."
Senior district court judge Dr.
Franz Freyer recounts this
incident:
"One time five German boys
had tried to escape. But they

were found and brought back

only a few hours later, and
taken to Captain Marek.
Agitated and trembling, men
and boys watched the terrible
scene that was now played
out before their eyes. 'One
word of displeasure, just one,
and we will shoot!' Marek
warned us. The five boys
were led to the riding school,
stripped of their pants, and
the punishment began. It was
disgusting to see how the
Czechs crowded around, each
eager to land a few blows of
his own. The merciless blows
with canes and whips reduced
the boys to heart-rending
whimpers. Blood ran down
their thighs, then the Czech
'soldiers' dispersed. The boys
remained standing with their
faces to the wall. A guard
posted himself beside them.
"Gradually the agitated
spectators calmed down.
Everyone believed that the
boys' punishment was over
and done with this beating.
But we were terribly
mistaken.
"Half an hour later, several
Czechs holding guns took up
position near the boys. A
guard called out: 'Anyone
else who tries to escape will
be shot, just like these boys
will be now.'
"At first the frightened boys
looked over their shoulders,

then they turned around. Two

of the Czechs who stood fairly
close aimed at the first boy in
the line-up. Their shots rang
out, and the boy sank to the
ground. His blood stained the
wall behind him. The other
boys pleaded, 'Captain, sir,
we won't do it again!' The
second boy in the line tried to
run to the executioners to
slap their rifle barrels up but these murderers had
already repeated their guns,
and the second boy fell to the
ground amid their fire. Mortar
sprayed up, and again blood
stained the wall. The
remaining three boys now
faced their fate heroically.
The third cried out for his
mother before collapsing; the
fourth remained on his feet
after the first salvo, looked
silently into the gun barrels
pointed at him anew, and
sank to the ground only after
the second row of shots. The
fifth was also gunned down.
These boys were perhaps 15
years old.
"We grown-ups had to watch
the murders helplessly. There
was to be no end to the
mental torture that day.
Those marked for death were
kept in the stables along the
narrow back of the yard.
Punctually on the stroke of
every hour, a group of Czechs
armed with canes and whips
went into the stables, and
then, for about ten minutes,

we heard the screams and

whimpers of the beaten. This
went on like that until
evening. The shootings
themselves were not as
nerve-racking as this
torturing of people who had
been chosen for execution
and who were so brutally
tormented beforehand. Every
day prisoners were shot and
thrown into the slit trenches,
which the rest of us then had
to use as latrines."

THE MASS DYING IN THE

ELBE RIVER
An unbelievable fate struck
thousands of Germans in
Aussig. Herbert Schernstein,
a Communist, had been in
the concentration camps
Theresienstadt,
Sachsenhausen and
Ravensbrck from 1938 to
1945.
He recounts: "On July 8 I
returned from the
concentration camp to
Aussig, where the Czechs had
just deported my mother.
One day near the end of July,
already past 4:00 p.m.,
members of the Svoboda
Guard drove all the Germans
from the surrounding blocks
of houses out of their homes
and hounded them en masse
into the Elbe River. I saw
women and children vanish

among the waves. Czech

groups with submachine guns
had set up on Ferdinand
Heights, whence they shot at
the Germans floating in the
river. I would estimate that
some 2,000 Germans were
killed that way. The Czechs
proceeded especially severely
against German anti-Fascists,
who were made to wear red
identifying armbands."
Another eyewitness
remembers: "The wildest
groups raged near the market
square and the train station.
Women were thrown into the
Elbe along with their babies
in their prams, and the
soldiers then used them for
target practice, shooting at
the women until they no
longer surfaced. They also
threw Germans into the water
reservoir in the market
square, and pushed them
back underwater with poles
whenever they tried to come
up for air."
Konrad Herbertstein saw the
happenings at the Elbe
bridge: "I saw hundreds of
German laborers from the
Schicht works being thrown
into the Elbe. The Czechs also
shoved women and children
and even baby carriages into
the river. "
It was not until about 5:00
p.m. that some Russian
officers tried to stop the

raging mob, and a few

Czechs in uniform were
helping them. The Czech
mayor of Aussig at that time
- his name was Vondra - had
tried his best to stop the
murdering mob, who had
come from outside Aussig,
and he was almost thrown
into the Elbe himself for his
efforts." Another account
shows how the Czech military
also participated in the
murdering. Josef Grssl has
testified: "I was arrested, tied
hand and foot, beaten
unconscious three times in a
row, and then thrown into a
one-man bunker in the
Welpert camp. Eleven men
from the farming community
had already been shot there
by Lieutenant Anton Cerny's
unit. By a lucky coincidence I
escaped the same fate, and
stayed in the camp for 14
days as the lieutenant's
batman. Every day I saw
people being abused, shot, or
beaten to death with a
hammer. The lieutenant
himself saw to the shooting. I
personally witnessed the
executions of about 20
people. Afterwards I was
forced to lick the lieutenant's
blood-spattered boots clean."
Heinrich Michel recalls the
concentration camp
Lerchental: "One day - I do
not remember the exact date
- a father and his son, who
had returned to his parents'

home from the battlefront

only the evening before, were
brought to the camp. Just
outside the gate to the
concentration camp the son
tried to flee. He was mowed
down with a submachine gun.
The father was forced to cart
the body of his murdered son
into the camp in a
wheelbarrow, and was
brutally beaten all the while.
A gruesome funeral
procession."
Elisabeth Bse attests: "On
just a single day, twelve men
were put to a gruesome
death in Wichstadl. After their
noses and ears had been cut
off, they were beaten and
thrown into the water, and
then they were hanged from
the trees surrounding the
church. Among them was a
Czech who had made
weapons for the Volkssturm.
We inhabitants of the town
were not allowed to leave our
houses while this tragedy was
going on. One neighbor (a
farmer) had to dig his own
grave before being shot."
F. Fiedler attests: "In Haida
60 prisoners, including many
women, were forced to strip
to the waist and take off their
shoes. Then they had to
kneel on the pavement of the
market square and were
grossly beaten on the chest
and the soles of their feet by
Czech tormentors until they

collapsed unconscious. Cold

water poured on the heads of
these victims brought them
to again so that the torture
could be continued. This
maltreatment went on until
daybreak, and then these
poor people who had been
tortured to the brink of death
were shot in the market
square."

THE BABY'S HEAD IN THE

LATRINE
Frau M. v. W.'s observation
about her stay at camp
Pohrlitz go also for all the
other camps: the most
terrible and humiliating thing
of all were the constant
beatings. "Beatings were
administered by fist, by whip
and by rubber cable. Beatings
happened day and night; no
night went by without
beatings, screaming, and the
crack of whips and bullets. At
night, Czechs from outside
the camp forced their way in,
and the prisoners were
dragged out of their bunks
and beaten until they passed
out. "Night after night the
women were raped - even the
sick and the elderly, even the
70-year-olds. The partisans
let the soldiers in, and each
of the women were abused
several times a night. I once
saw a soldier trying to rape a
delicate eleven-year-old girl.

The horrified mother tried to

fight him off with the
superhuman strength of
desperation, and offered
herself to the soldier instead,
to save her child."
An account from Modrassy: A
mother whose newborn had
starved to death committed
suicide. One of the
gendarmes ordered: "Throw
the dirty pig and her bastard
into the latrine!" Three
women had to throw the
bodies of the mother and her
dead baby into the open
cesspit. Partisans then forced
the inmates of the camp to
use this cesspit as toilet so
that "the dirty sow and her
bastard disappear as fast as
possible," as they put it. This
continued for days, and even
weeks later the baby's head
and one of the mother's arms
could be seen sticking out of
the filth. In one barracks a
young mother of four
children, the youngest of
which was three years old,
suddenly died. The Czech
physician who came to do the
post-mortem barked at the
dead woman's sobbing
mother: "What are you
howling for, you German
bitch, at least one more
German pig has kicked the
bucket!"
Frau Martha Wlfel reports
about Klaidovka: "In our
camp all the toddlers four

years old and younger died of

malnutrition. There were
more than 200 of them. My
child died there too, on April
12, 1946, at the age of 15
months. Three or four days
earlier the child had been
taken to the children's
hospital ward, where even
the Czechs were horrified at
the shape the child was in.
They notified me in the camp
when the child died. But
when I asked where it would
be buried, one of the guards
gave me such a blow to the
head that I collapsed
unconscious. To this day I
don't know where my child is
buried. It was the same for
other women. "One pregnant
woman was tortured
especially badly. When a
Czech soldier entered the
room and spat there, she had
to kneel down and lick up his
spit. If she had refused, she
would have been beaten to
death. Sometimes she was
beaten until she vomited
blood, and then they forced
her to eat what she had
thrown up."
Czech doctors refused to
treat venereal diseases
resulting from rape; the
German women literally
begged them for medication.
Wounded German soldiers
whose open abscesses were
crawling with worms and who
were covered all over with
sores were simply left to their

fate. People who did not yet

have dysentery were forced
to lick the soiled clothes of
people who did. Anyone who
refused was beaten
unconscious. "A 15-year-old
boy whose father had
managed to escape was
beaten daily until they found
his father, who was then tied
by the hands and doused
with boiling water. His son
was also tied up, and forced
to watch. "The screams of the
poor man thus tortured to
death pushed many camp
inmates to nervous
breakdowns."
Nervous breakdowns were
the order of the day anyhow,
and the Czechs regarded that
as a perfectly normal
condition. It is impossible to
describe all that happened. I
can only pick out a few
examples.

Johanna Huber
Photo from the days of
Wellemin.

CRUCIFIED ON THE BARN

DOOR
The affidavits about the
expulsion of the Sudeten
Germans were all sworn by
persons living in Germany.
They had been questioned by
the Ministry for Displaced
Persons in Bonn. All the more
significant, therefore, are the
statements of Austrians,
which have not found their
way into any published
documentation. Frau Johanna
Huber of Klagenfurt is one of
many. She cannot recall
those days without
shuddering: "Together with
the Russians, Czech partisans
arrived in our almost entirely
German town of Wellemin,
near Leitmeritz. We stayed on
our 125-acre estate, even
though Jim, our British
prisoner-of-war [farm
laborer], pleaded with us to
leave with them. He wanted
to take us to safety. But we
had a clear conscience, and
besides, we had never had
anything to do with the
National Socialist Party. We
had no idea what was in store
for us. First the Czechs
exercised lynch-law on the
Party functionaries. One of
them, a master carpenter
whose name I don't recall,
was beaten half to death and

then thrown into the elevenmeter-deep well. The local

group leader, senior primary
school teacher Kurzweil, was
beaten to death in a
basement together with
several of his friends. "But
the orgy of hate was not
directed only against Party
functionaries. Very soon we
realized with horror that all of
us Germans, without
exception and with no regard
to our attitude towards the
Party, had become fair game,
literally overnight. We had to
wear white identifying
armbands, were forbidden to
use the sidewalks, and were
driven with beatings and
clubbings to clean the latrines
in public office buildings.
Other women had to carry
heavy grenades and shells.
My 58-year-old mother
suffered an abdominal
rupture doing this. Through
my desperate pleading I was
able to obtain permission
from a Russian in Milleschau
to take her in a handcart to
the hospital in Leitmeritz, 17
miles away. But once we were
there they did not want to
admit her, because she was
German. A German senior
physician had the suicidal
courage to insist on her
admission and to operate on
her. And she was almost
recovered already when all
German patients and the
senior physician himself were
killed by Czechs. I never saw

my beloved mother again.

"On my way to the Russian
command post in Milleschau,
I had seen with horror how
Czechs dragged wounded
German privates and
Blitzmdchen, girls who had
been assistants to the
Wehrmacht, into Count
Milleschau's castle, whose
cellars had been turned into
day-and-night torture
chambers. I still hear within
myself the bloodcurdling
screams that came from the
depths of this building that
had once been an
architectural jewel of our
region. As I learned later, the
people were first beaten half
to death and then hoses were
pushed up their rectum and
their intestines forcibly filled
with high-pressure water. Of
course the Count himself had
been the first to be killed.
"The road from Milleschau to
Wellemin was a highway of
horror. The dreadfully
battered bodies of German
soldiers lay everywhere.
Many of them still wore dirty,
bloody bandages - they must
have been wounded who had
tried in vain to crawl for their
lives. I was unspeakably
afraid for my 14-year-old
daughter Marlene, who had
hidden herself and a friend in
the working quarters of the
neighboring house, where a
Russian officer was

quartered. That way the

house was safe from the
Czechs.
"But Marlene suffered weeks
of psychologically devastating
terror in her hiding place.
"Three days after my mother
was admitted to the hospital,
all the young women in
Wellemin were rounded up.
In groups we were led into
the basement of the town
hall. Wooden blocks had been
set up there. Under the
greedy eyes of 'Revolutionary
Guardsman' we had to
undress and lie down on the
blocks. "Then the young
Czechs stepped up one after
the other and beat us with
wooden bludgeons on our
backs, buttocks and thighs,
but especially on the kidney
area. The weakest among us
did not survive this torture.
Those who had proved to be
the toughest were then also
raped, even though they
were only semiconscious and
whimpering in pain.
"I was locked up, alone, in
the dark bathroom of the
town hall. For hours I still
heard the gruesome screams
of the tortured women in the
basement. In my despair all I
wished for was a quick
death."
Johanna Huber recalls that
news of further horrors
arrived frequently from the

surrounding villages. In
Katzauer the farmer Malik
was nailed head-down onto
the door of his barn. Then
wooden matches were driven
under his fingernails, and lit.

"CAESAREAN SECTION",
CZECH-STYLE
Johanna Huber continues:
"But the most gruesome
death of all was reserved for
my pregnant neighbor, Frau
Kosnarsch. Her amputee
husband (he had lost a leg),
both her parents, and her
daughter were brutally
beaten to death in the house.
The pregnant woman's
stomach had been trampled
or cut open; it was one huge,
gruesome, horrible, dreadful
wound. The umbilical cord
was wrapped around the
dead woman's throat, and the
unborn baby's brains were
splattered over the wall.
"On our estate lived 80-yearold Anna Preis. A partisan
smashed her glasses with a
club in such a way that the
glass shards cut her eyes.
The blinded woman hanged
herself in despair a few days
later.
"Suicide was the only way out
for many people in those
days. Today we know that
there was a huge wave of
German suicides throughout

all of Czechoslovakia. We too

searched the barn, in vain,
for some ergot with which to
poison ourselves. The
pharmacist Pfeifer, a half-Jew
who had been horribly
abused, advised us to take
razor blades and slit our
wrists to escape all the
horror, he said that this was
the least painful death. What
luck that we couldn't find any
razor blades. Fate spared our
lives, even if we did lose
everything that the hard work
of generations had wrought."
In May and June the wave of
suicides that struck many
towns and villages of the
Sudetenland claimed the lives
of older people in particular.
By law the Germans no
longer had any rights
whatsoever. If they even had
a home left at all, they were
forced to keep it open to
plunderers at all times. They
had to hand in all their
valuables, from jewelry to
cameras.
Germans were forbidden to
use public transit. They were
forbidden to leave their
homes, except on orders or
at specific times. Letter
writing was also forbidden, as
was entering a public inn, a
train station or a post office.
They usually received no
ration cards at all, and if they
did, these included no stamps
for meat, eggs, milk, cheese

or fruit - which meant the

death sentence for many
children.
Insofar as they were not
already locked up in the
concentration camps, the
Germans were obligated to
forced labor without pay. In
many places, the people were
ordered to assemble at
certain locations, whence
they were transported off as
labor slaves to work in
agriculture, mining or
industry. The German clergy
was also not spared the orgy
of hate. Cistercian abbot
Eberhard Harzer of Ossegg
recounts:
"At every other step on my
return to the cell I had to
step over a dead or half-dead
person. Back in the barracks I
heard the old German men of
Maria-Ratschitz being shot
down behind the barracks
wall. They included almost all
the old Christian-Socialist
party members. The women
were beaten horribly, to the
point where they could barely
see through the swelling. All
women had been raped, and
many had severe internal
injuries and were infected
with syphilis.
"When the 'Svobodici' could
rape no more, they resorted
to bottle necks with which
they continued torturing the
women. When I left this camp

in October, many of these

women were still lying badly
injured in the sick-rooms."
The abbot had been
repeatedly arrested, abused
and released again.
On November 29, 1945, he
writes, "I was arrested again
and taken to the
concentration camp in Dux.
There were some fellowprisoners there who had
endured that terrible day in
Bilin. Men and women from
the environs of Bilin were
herded together in the
market square where they
had to strip naked and then
had to march single-file past
the Czech population, who
beat them with whips and
canes. After that, the men in
particular had to crawl in a
row on all fours like dogs,
and were beaten until they
lost control over their bowels.
The ones behind then had to
lick it off the ones in front of
them. This torture continued
until many had been beaten
to death; the priest of
Radowesitz was among these.
What was done to the women
there is simply beyond
description - the sadistic
monstrosity of it all is too
much."

Hermine Weissmann:
"To this day the memories
make me tremble."

Hermine Weissmann:
"To this day the memories
make me tremble. My
experiences still weigh on my
mind so much that I start to
tremble whenever I so much
as speak about them. I was
17 years old at the time - at
that age a person retains
things very vividly. I am from
Southern Moravia. My home
town, Schaffa, is one
kilometer away from the
Austrian border. In our town
there were never any Czechs
- only servants - and then the
gendarmerie.
"On May 5, 1945 the Czechs
came to get my father. He
wasn't even given enough
time to put his shoes on.
They beat him halfunconscious and dragged him
to a truck and threw him up
like an animal - we were
paralyzed with horror.

"On May 13 we were taken to

a forest clearing near Stallek.
Even from afar we could
already smell the stench of
decomposing bodies. We
were forced to search
through the mountain of
corpses for our missing
relatives. I don't know how
many dead bodies lay there,
swollen and distended by the
heat. All of them lay
facedown, and all wore the
identifying armband
'Nemecky'. All of them had
been murdered via a bullet in
the neck. We recognized
them by their clothes - it was
truly hell. We were
'generously' permitted to take
our dead home, at night and
in a box that stood ready.
"Meanwhile the other men of
the town had also been
apprehended, and for two
days and nights they were
crowded together without
food in the basement of the
local school, which was
flooded chest-high with water.
Then they were flogged there
with whips to whose ends
iron nuts had been tied, and
whoever passed out,
drowned.
"Later the survivors were
taken into the interior of
Czechoslovakia. Many never
returned - and for those who
did, it was not until 1946,
and they were broken men.
My uncles Lambert Koller and

Johann Mang were among

them. When the Czechs went
on the rampage among those
of us who remained in the
town, we went for help from
the Russians, who were
stationed in Riegersburg,
Austria, three kilometers
away.
"On June 4, 1945, Czechs
with guns at the ready took
my family and me to the
Austrian border and expelled
us. We were allowed to take
50 pounds of luggage, and
even that was ultimately
taken from us at the border."

Sylvia Schlosser
Frau Sylvia Schlosser, Vienna:
"We saw dreadful,
inconceivable cruelties in the
camp. Often we heard the
screams of the tortured
people all day and night long.
We children were also beaten.
I lost my father, a physician,
to a horrible fate. From my
uncle, who was in a camp in

Moravian Ostrau together

with my father, I learned that
my father, who had had to
work in the coal pits, was
killed most brutally. He and
other men had to stand in
front of a coal cart that held
red-hot coal, and guards
poured that over the German
men. The charred corpses
were then thrown into a mass
grave. Our family physician
from Moravian Ostrau was
hanged, his mother, more
than 80 years old, was torn
to pieces on a market square
by tying her legs to two
horses. Many innocent people
shared that same fate.
"When I remember this
horrible time after the war in
that country, I do also recall a
Czech woman who risked her
own life to take some food to
her former employer in the
Czech concentration camp,
and I recall the young Czech
woman who got me out of
the camp for a few weeks by
persuading the Czech camp
guard that she needed
someone to help her with her
six-month-old baby. I was not
quite ten years old at that
time. The woman gave me
something to eat, and that
was certainly not the least
reason why I survived."
Frau Therese Stonner-Ther
from Bad Gro-Ullersdorf:
"In June 1945 my sister,

Gertrud Guntermann, was

found badly wounded in her
home in Moravian Schnberg.
One of her neighbors hurried
to the nearest doctor and
asked for help. The doctor
brusquely refused any and all
aid, and said, 'A German can
bloody well die!' And so my
42-year-old sister died
without even so much as a
minimum of medical attention
and was thrown into a pit
outside the cemetery
together with many other
murdered Germans. My
father wanted to at least buy
a coffin, but that was
forbidden. Similarly, the new
Czech owners of my father's
drugstore would not even
allow my mother to pick
some flowers from the
garden that had used to be
ours, to take to my poor dead
sister's grave. - I would like
to add that my sister had
never been politically active
in any way."
THE RUSSIANS AS LIFESAVERS
Frau Josefine Waimann left a
large estate behind in
Czechoslovakia. The scenes
of horror that she witnessed
in Masaryk Stadium in Prague
are stamped indelibly on her
memory.

Josefine Waimann:
Masaryk Stadium was an
inferno.

Josefine Waimann:
Masaryk Stadium was an
inferno.
"Already in late April we fled
from the Russians, to the
Americans, in the direction of
Pilsen," reports Frau
Waimann, who today lives in
Klagenfurt. "But the
Americans handed us over to
the Russians by the
thousands, and the Russians
then directed our refugee
columns towards Prague.
"But the Soviets did protect
us from the attacks of the
Czechs. Without their escort
we would have been beaten
to death on the way, before
we even reached Prague. In
this respect the Russians
made short work of the
Czechs. In Knigswiese near

Prague I saw a Czech beating

a German lieutenant. When
the latter tried to defend
himself, the Czech shot him.
A Russian saw that, pulled
out his pistol and gunned the
Czech down without a word.
"Still under Russian guard,
we were herded through the
raging pandemonium of
Prague, in whose streets
horribly mutilated bodies of
German privates hung from
the street lamp posts
everywhere, and on into
Masaryk Stadium. There, we
were caught up by the Czech
murder machine.
"Words fail me to describe
what took place in the first
few days in that stadium,
where by and by 40,000
Germans were crammed
together, without water,
almost entirely without food.
Men, women, children and
soldiers. My little children
cried for hunger.
"Before our eyes there began
a sadistic revenge against
SS-men and 'incriminated'
persons, who were tortured
to death in every way
imaginable. I most vividly
remember a young pregnant
woman; young Czechs in
uniform slit her belly open,
tore out the embryo and,
howling with glee, stuffed a
dachshund into the torn body
of the woman, who was

screaming horribly. We
huddled in the grandstands.
The butchering in the arena
before our eyes was like that
in ancient Rome.
"Constantly, groups of
privates who had been
discovered to be marked with
the SS-rune were liquidated
in the most horrible fashion,
first they were flogged, then
beaten with clubs, and finally
shot. They were only ever
shot after protracted torture.
The screams of the agonized
victims who were being
skinned alive went right
through us. And thousands of
children had to watch all this.
How many of them must
have been psychologically
traumatized for life! Among
the doomed I saw many very
young fellows, they could not
yet have been 17 years old.
They must have been just
drafted. Now these poor boys
were caught by the merciless
torture of this murder
machine. The bodies were
dumped in deep trenches.
Insofar as there was enough
space, many were thrown
into the latrines of the
enormous stadium, and we
had to relieve ourselves over
the bodies - but it was only
water and mucus anyhow.
"Added to the horrors of this
camp were the dreadful
screams that carried over to
us from the city proper. A

rash of suicides began, with

people slitting their wrists. At
night the Czechs let hundreds
of drunk Russians into the
stadium, probably for bribe
money. They raped the
German women right beside
their children. It was truly
hell, Masaryk Stadium was.
"However, after a few days
this mass butchery came to
be too much even for the
Russians. A Soviet General
intervened. He announced via
loudspeakers that there was
to be an end to all the raping.
If his soldiers should come at
night to get women, all of us
should scream so the guards
could hear us, he instructed.
And that is what we did.
"At Whitsun 1945 I was
separated from my husband
and children and my nieces
and nephews, who died in the
stadium, and was deported to
forced labor in Semcice. We
had to work hard there, but
the Czechs in the rural areas
proved to be more humane
than their urban brothers.
German children died by the
hundreds in a camp nearby. A
Russian soldier from the
Crimea plundered food from
the farmers at submachine
gunpoint and brought the
provisions to us in his
backpack until he was
reported for his activities.
"And again I had a Russian to

thank for saving my life, later

on in Bunzlau, when a pack
of Czech women beat me up.
They might have beaten me
to death if a Russian officer
had not saved me. In this
camp there was a priest from
Linz, a true saint, who lifted
us up and also helped us flee.
In Schandau in the Eastern
Zone we wept for joy at
having escaped from hell. The
inhabitants told us that the
bodies of dead Germans
floating down the Elbe River
had been an everyday sight
for weeks."

TODDLERS BURIED ALIVE

"He that hushes up a crime,"
says engineer Helmut Gold of
St. Georgen on the Lngsee,
"puts himself on the same
level as the criminal and thus
gives rise to the danger of
repetition. A crime ever
remains a crime, regardless
whether it be the victor or
the vanquished who
committed it.

"I was a boy nine years of

age when I came to know
the hatred of the Czechs.
"I soon forgot the blows and
kicks that I received in those
days whenever I - a child
identified as German by the
'N' ('Nemec' = 'German') on a
white background, and later

with a light-colored armband

- encountered any Czechs...
What I remember very well,
however, is the constant fear
that we children lived with,
namely that the Czechs might
kill our mother. Among my
recollections of the Czechs'
cruelties there also remains
the memory of their standard
name for us: 'Nemci Svinja'
(German swine). They left us
nothing at all of our estate in
Moravia. But we were lucky we got off with our lives. How
much more humane than this
western Slavic people of the
Czechs the Russians are, is
shown by the fact that the
Russian soldateska spared
children, and mothers with
many children. To protect
herself from being raped by
Russians, my mother would
carry a toddler in her arms
when she had to go outside.
But the Czechs felt no
stirrings of humanity at that
sight either. Honek, the Czech
General and parliamentarian
of the First Republic, together
with his daughter, reported in
their publication Bloody
Prague that in the first days
of May 1945 several hundred
German children and toddlers
were locked into an
underground room. The only
exit was bricked up.
"Never in my life will I forget
the sight of one dead child in
the concentration camp in
Moravian Weikirchen (today

called Chranice). We were

locked up there with our
mother before being
transported off to Germany in
cattle cars filled with 50
persons each.
"A young guard soldier had
shot a toddler who had
wandered near the barbedwire fence. I will ever
remember the sight of his
grinning face as he continued
to send burst after burst of
submachine gun fire into the
dead lump of flesh. The
pathetic remains of what had
been a child continued to jerk
under the impact of the
bullets that drove into the
shredded body.
"In Brnn a district farmer
was stripped naked, tied up
with wire and locked into a
cell together with some rats.
He suffered for a whole week
until death finally released
him from his torment. It was
said that the rats had chewed
his belly open, and his
intestines were hanging out."
Frau E. Waller will never
forget one tragic
concentration camp fate:
"Every day we were
threatened that we would be
shot. These threats suddenly
ceased when we repeatedly
begged them to really do it
and release us from our
martyrdom. One day it was
announced that all Austrians

should report for immediate

release. Among them was a
young woman, who reported
immediately. She was beside
herself with joy. When she
had been driven from her
home, her six-year-old
daughter had been away, and
the poor woman had worried
and fretted about her child
the entire time she had been
in the camp. Her husband
had fallen in the war, and so
she had had more than her
full share of troubles and we
were only too happy for her
release. However, some
documents that she had to
present were missing, since
of course she didn't have
them with her, and so she
was sent under guard to her
home to fetch them.
Unfortunately the guard
found more than he had been
looking for, namely various
evidence that she had used
to work as typist in a
Wehrmacht office. From that
point on her fate was sealed.
The dream of release was
over. What that poor soul had
to endure from that day forth
is simply indescribable. She
had to clean dreadfully filthy
latrines with her bare hands,
without any tools or water;
she was locked into a dark
basement for days and nights
on end; they smashed her
head into the wall. Several
weeks later, when we finally
started off on our death
march to the train station to

be shipped off to Raudnitz, to

the slave market, we tried to
save her by keeping her, who
could hardly even still walk,
as much towards the middle
of our group as possible.
Someone had lent her a large
sort of shawl so that she
could disguise herself a bit.
Nonetheless one of the
henchmen recognized her,
and she was beaten to death
before our eyes."

THERESIENSTADT: LIVING
CORPSES
In March 1979 the President
of Austria placed a wreath in
Theresienstadt in memory of
the dead Jews. Did he also
spare a thought for the
Germans and Austrians who
had been tortured to death
there?
Very few survived the
Theresienstadt camp of postwar days. Physician Dr. Emil
Siegel reports: "Gassing
failed to work for technical
reasons, and so what
remained for us was a slow
torture-to-the-death. In the
first weeks no one was
granted the mercy of a quick
death. Already at the
admission we were told that
we would be slowly tortured
to death. 'No one who comes
here will get out alive.' And
that's how it was. It was not

until the Russians intervened

that things got better."

Condemned German
prisoners in the
Theresienstadt concentration
camp.
This physician is one of the
few who survived that death
camp. We shall not repeat all
his descriptions of the
gruesome torture here. But
the following account of Dr.
Siegel's is representative for
Theresienstadt.
When typhus broke out in the
camp, he was sent to serve
as doctor in the 'sick cells':
"The ill were crowded so
closely together that they
could not lie on their backs,
only on their sides. Among
them were many who came
from the last battles and who
had only just been
amputated; most of them
were leg or upper-thigh
amputees, some were also
missing an arm. Almost all of
them were young fellows

aged 16 to 18 - allegedly SSmen. They lay on the bare

concrete floor squeezed
together like sardines,
bumping into each other with
their amputated stumps. The
bandages were wholly soaked
with pus, stank horribly and
crawled with fly maggots. On
some, the bandages had
fallen off and the bare, puscovered wound or bone
stump showed. They begged
to be bandaged, and I will
never in my life forget their
faces, lined with dreadful pain
and endless despair, as they
lay there squashed together
on the floor and constantly
bumped into each other's
wounds. These poor souls
were the biggest joy of camp
commandant Prusa and his
accomplices, who reveled in
their agony.
"In my role as doctor I was
forbidden either to apply a
bandage or to speak so much
as one word to these young
fellows. While checking their
wounds I was restrained by
the arm, and I was told that
if I said even a single word to
the amputees I would join
them there on the floor. The
martyrdom of these poor
souls lasted several weeks. I
saw them one more time - as
dead bodies, showing
evidence of having been
beaten, especially on their
amputated stumps. I don't
know whether they were

beaten to death, or strangled

'Theresienstadt-style'.
"Everyone in the typhus camp
suffered from raging fever. In
their stupor they would be
forever leaving their pallet,
they did not react to being
spoken to, and in a very short
time the entire room and the
lavatory were smeared all
over with diarrhea, as were
the straw sacks that
constituted the pallets, and
the patients themselves as
well. Added to this were the
hordes of fleas and flies that
came over from the mortuary
opposite, where many
corpses were often left lying
around naked for days. There
was no end to the bedbugs.
Since there was nothing to
drink the patients would
totter out to the water toilets
where they drank the water
out of the toilet bowls.
"The commandant's daughter,
Sonja Prusova, was a sadist.
I was told that she had
personally helped to beat 28
people to death. She tore
women's hair out, beat them
in the face or belly with her
fists or feet, and flogged
them; women who had
suffered at her hands told me
this themselves. I always
knew, when I saw her
running to Yard 4 with
glowing eyes and greedy
mouth, that now there were
more people being tortured,

and that blood would flow

again."

"MURDER FACTORY"
THERESIENSTADT
A nurse who later died told
Dr. Emil Siegel in the camp:
"During the registration
process I was beaten to the
point where they knocked out
one of my teeth. The wife of
an SS-man was beaten
together with me. I was
taken away, and the SS wife
was shoved rear-down onto
an SS dagger. I heard her
scream dreadfully as the
sharp knife cut into her
intestines.
"In my cell I had to strip
naked in front of everyone,
and was beaten again. Since
I was covered all over with
blood, I was given some
water to wash up. Naked as I
was, I had to stand on a flag
all night long. The next day
we were given prison
clothing.
"Every day for four weeks I
received 25 blows with a
truncheon, cane, strap or
whatever else the guard
happened to get his hands
on. He was a very young
fellow, and he constantly
tried to rape me; but because
I desperately fought him off, I
would always end up being

flogged by him instead, until I

collapsed unconscious. After
these four horrible weeks I
was put into a group of SS
men (I was the only woman
among them) and put to
corpse-carrying duty. They
were the bodies of typhus
victims.
"I was beaten during this
work, and also had to watch
how SS-men were beaten
until they died. Whenever I
passed out from the stench of
the dead bodies, a bucket of
water would be poured over
me, and I had to dig on. In
this way I repeatedly fell into
one of the mass graves, onto
the bodies. On one of my feet
I had a wound that became
badly inflamed. They gave
me a shoe, and I had to dig
on. With bare hands and no
protection whatsoever we had
to dig these bodies out and
place each into a coffin. It is
beyond me how the body
toxins didn't kill us."
Eduard Fritsch reports about
Theresienstadt: "One day, I
and some others were
ordered to clean up the
single-cells where the bodies
of those lay who had been
beaten to death. Clotted
blood was layered several
centimeters deep on the
floor; cut-off ears, knockedout teeth, chunks of skin,
hair, dentures and the like lay
everywhere. The stench of

the blood etc. soon made it

impossible for us to continue
washing the cells and
hallways. After two or three
days many of us developed
terrible swellings on our back,
neck, head and arms. I was
ordered to report to the sickward, where I saw something
terrifying: patients were
stripped to the skin and laid
on a stretcher and the doctor
then injected them with a
fast-acting poison. These
people died within one
minute."
Eduard Kaltofen recounts:
"One day another 100
Germans were brought to the
camp. First they were
plundered of all their
possessions (wedding rings,
watches, money), and the
guards descended on these
things like a wild horde.
Among these 100 people was
a leg-amputee with crutches,
a war invalid. He was beaten
with his crutches until he lay
dead. Some days later all
inmates had to line up behind
the barracks. 100 feet away
from our spot there was a
sand pit. Four Germans had
to place their coffins at the
ready there, then the first
two were killed via a bullet in
the neck, and then the others
as well. At first we had to
watch. In this way hundreds
of German men were
murdered by being shot in
the neck. Every night we

heard the shots from that

sand pit. There was no end to
the transport of bodies out of
the camp."

CUCUMBER SALAD WITH

GLASS SHARDS
One terrible aspect of
Theresienstadt is the
constant starvation. The
battle for a spoonful of
watery soup grows more and
more embittered. Racked by
hunger, an inmate one day
attempts to sneak an extra
scoop of the bland liquid into
his bowl.
"The overseer sees him do it.
He proceeds to force the
prisoner to gulp down the
lukewarm dishwater in such
quantities that the soup runs
back out of his mouth. The
prisoner dies that same
evening. The excessive
quantity of liquid has burst
his insides.
"Another inmate steals his
fellow-prisoner's daily ration
of bread. That very same
evening the thief is ordered
to dinner by the yard
commandant. There are fried
potatoes with cucumber salad
and glass splinters;
asparagus with potatoes and
minced coal; followed by a
dessert containing cobbler's
nails - all of it in incredible

quantities. The inmate has to

eat it all. He too is a dead
man later that same evening.
"The cases of famine oedema
increase alarmingly. In
August 1945 the mass graves
dating from the German
concentration camp days are
discovered. We criminals from
the single-cells are drawn on
to make up the infamous
corpse-commando. The
bodies in the graves are
covered with chloride of lime,
black and rotting. A choking
gas, a mixture of chloride of
lime and decomposition
gases, rises acridly from the
pits that have been
uncovered. Driven on with
whippings and kicks, we have
to retrieve the bodies from
the depths with our bare
hands. We lift them up
carefully so that they will not
burst and let the decomposed
insides run out. The press is
there en masse. Movie
cameras whir. The entire
thing is turned into a largescale propaganda project. In
the bright late-summer sun
the bodies are lined up on the
ground. In the evening, we
inmates are forced to kiss the
rows of corpses. Many
subsequently die from the
body toxins.
"Eventually, towards
midnight, the group of guards
on duty - they are drunken
fellows aged 19 to 25 - make

their nightly rounds to the

single-cells. It is an unspoken
rule that an inmate is to be
whipped to death with a wire
whip on these occasions. For
the Czech guards this is
perhaps no more than a lark
to pass the time, but for the
victim it is painful torture
indeed. Sometimes it lasts
half an hour, sometimes
longer. During this time the
entire single-cell block rings
with the desperate screams
of the tortured, with the
angry barking of the dogs
excited by the commotion
and the smell of warm blood,
with the whistling crack of the
blows raining down on the
inmate's body, and finally we
hear the victim's death rattle,
growing ever fainter.
"SS truck driver Matz is
among the beaten every day
and every night. But they
don't beat him to death they want to force
confessions from him instead.
And one day they have worn
him down. He makes the
confessions that his
tormentors want. They beat
more than a hundred
confessions of having
murdered Czechs out of him.
He had not actually
participated in even one of
them. Every night I hear him
groaning. The concrete floor
is so hard, and poor Metz
doesn't know which way best
to lie on it. Flesh hangs off

his back in shreds, and his

sides are raw from the
floggings. He is covered all
over with bloody marks from
blows and kicks. One
morning, after a terrible
night, one of his eyes is burst
and drained, and the other so
badly swollen that he cannot
see with it.
"One of the many open
wounds on his body gives rise
to blood poisoning. Sepsis
sets in. One morning one of
his thighs is puffed up to the
size of an elephant's leg. The
rest of his body is as thin as
an eight-year-old's. On their
nightly visit, his tormentors
discover his deformed leg.
They force him to do onehundred squats. His tortured
agonized body cannot
manage even one. The
guards shake with laughter.
Then they beat and kick him,
that he flies around in his cell
like some coffee bean in the
grinder. Two days later, Matz
is dead. One of countless
many."

LINE UP TO BE SHOT
Heinz Lapczyna of Moravian
Ostrau testified about Czech
interrogation methods: "To
extort confessions, the
prisoner would be stabbed
under his finger and toe nails
with red-hot needles until he

fainted from the pain.

"Then the people were
'revived' with clubbings and
other kinds of abuse. Another
method of extorting
confessions was to beat the
victim on the bare soles of his
feet until the area between
toes and heel was nothing
more than a gaping wound.
To torture the victim a bit
more, he would then be
forced to kneel for a few
days, until he too fell over
unconscious. The prison
warder's daily greeting was,
'has no German swine
croaked yet?'
"Dreadful atrocities took
place in the Hanke camp in
Moravian Ostrau. Groups of
20 people were crammed into
a tiny room and forced to
sing Fascist songs, after
which they were beaten to
death with fence slats, and
the rest were hanged. At the
Czech guards' daily drinking
bouts the young women and
girls had to serve, bucknaked, and were abused and
raped. The older ones were
beaten to death.
"The Hodolein camp was no
better. Every day inmates
were beaten to death.
Everyone had to constantly
fear for their life. For
example, the Silesian
engineer Keite - or a similar
name - from Schweidnitz was

hanged for daring to defend

himself against the usual
abuse. He walked to the
gallows apathetically, his
head battered and swollen
black. Afterwards the body
was left to dangle in the yard
for days, and the Czech cloth
merchant Hunka and another
man had to kneel before the
body, later on some Germans
too. The Germans all had to
assemble in the yard and call,
'We thank our Fhrer!'"
Executions in the camps were
generally carried out in front
of all the inmates. Dr. Kurt
Schmidt recalls a scene in
Pribans near Prague:
"One day six young boys
were beaten until they could
no longer get up, then
doused with water (which the
Germans had to fetch) and
beaten on until there was no
sign of life left in them. Their
terribly mauled corpses were
put on display for days, next
to the latrines. One 14-yearold boy and his parents were
shot because the boy had
allegedly taken a stab at one
of the Red Guardsmen with a
pair of scissors."
Another scene of arbitrary
execution from the camp
Totzau:
"A Czech commissar went
through the rows of German
men and randomly picked

some until he had the

number he wanted - 20 - the
ones he chose were all tall,
blond men and boys. First
they were stripped of their
shoes and boots and made to
endure the worst kind of
abuse under a hail of blows
from whips, rifle butts etc.
One 17-year-old boy
collapsed unconscious. He
was brought back to life with
a bucket of cold water. By his
hands he was yanked up off
the ground. After these
people had been tortured for
about two hours, the
commandant ordered them to
line up in rows of two. And
only now, before our eyes,
they were mowed down with
submachine gun fire."
Adam Ehrenhard reports
about a blood bath in
Nachod: "On July 25, 1945,
some 200 members of the SS
were taken to the brewery in
Nachod and put at the
civilians' disposal, to be
abused. I myself witnessed
how all 200 of them were
brutally butchered by the
civilians. Czech women,
whom I know by name,
distinguished themselves with
particular brutality. They
stabbed the SS-men with
knives and daggers, beat
them with clubs and rifle
butts, and bodies that still
showed signs of life were
doused with gasoline and set

on fire.
"I had to help load the bodies
onto trucks and bury them in
three mass graves on the
Nachod castle grounds."

HYDROCHLORIC ACID ON
SORE BODIES
The proportion of women who
lost their lives in the
outbursts of sadism is great.
Thousands of staff assistants,
Blitzmdchen, nurses and
housewives were plunged
into the abysses of horror.
Particularly in Prague.
Homecomer Walter Lohmann,
an amputee missing an arm,
was part of a burial
commando in Prague from
May 12 to 15: "I saw
thousands of corpses,
including boys and girls and
many women. I saw bodies
that had been horribly
wounded and maimed. Later
I heard that many grossly
battered people, still living,
were corroded with
hydrochloric acid."
Many women were forced to
watch atrocities; Marianne
Klaus reports:
"On May 9, 1945, my
husband Gotthard Klaus,
aged 66, was beaten to death
in the police headquarters in
Prague. I saw him for the last

time on May 10 at 4:00

o'clock in the morning. He
had fist-sized swellings on his
face, his nose and mouth
were one bloody mass, and
his hands were swollen huge.
I also saw two SS-men being
whipped in the face until they
collapsed, covered in blood,
after which they were kicked
in the stomach until blood
streamed out, and then they
were dragged by their feet
down a flight of stairs. I saw
one Wehrmacht assistant girl
being stoned until she
collapsed, and then she was
hung from a store beam. On
the Day of Revolution I saw
an SS-man hung by one foot
from a streetlamp post,
burning from the head
upwards."
Helene Bugner remembers:
"On May 9 I was taken to tear
down barricades in the
streets of Prague. My labor
group consisted of 20
women. We had to kneel
down, and then our hair was
chopped off with bayonets.
We were stripped of shoes
and stockings so that we had
to go barefoot. At every step
we took, with every move we
made, we were beaten
dreadfully with boards,
truncheons etc. Whenever a
woman fell down, she was
kicked, rolled in excrement or
stoned until she was dead. I
passed out several times

myself, but I was doused with

water and had to walk on.
Once when I collapsed I felt a
dreadful kick in my left side
which broke two of my ribs.
During one of my faints
someone cut a piece of flesh,
about a square inch, out of
the sole of one of my feet.
These abuses went on for the
entire afternoon. Among my
group there were some highly
pregnant women and nursing
mothers, and they were
abused just as badly."
Human language will never
suffice to express adequately
what the women suffered in
the inferno of those days.
They were fair game in all the
concentration camps. Anyone
could come and pick
whomever they liked, and if
children screamed for their
mothers they were silenced
by force. The Czechs, but the
Russians too of course, often
did not even bother to lead
the women off, but raped
them in the midst of the
children and in front of all the
camp inmates. There is no
sex crime, no matter how
perverted, that was not done
to them.
On the whole, it was common
practice everywhere that any
Czech or Russian might
"borrow" a German slave.
The victim had to stay several
days, sometimes as long as
eight, and was raped up to 15

times per night. Most of these

women were later diagnosed
with venereal diseases. The
Russians had brought the
terrible Siberian gonorrhea
with them. The infected
women begged in vain for
medication. No German could
hope for medical treatment neither women nor men, nor
even children.
Unspeakable, unutterable,
unfathomable was the
suffering of the mothers who
had to watch their children
starve in the camp, or of
those who were torn from
their children, to be tortured
and then murdered.
Devastating in the extreme
was the fate of pregnant
women who were caught in
the vortex of hate. Just one
example; Ernst Schorz of
Moravian Ostrau recalls the
last words of his dying friend
Ernst Krischka: his wife, then
eight months pregnant and
imprisoned in the Hanke
camp, had been forced to
stand naked against a wall
and was clubbed on the belly
until the foetus aborted and
she died herself. Krischka,
who had spent a long time in
the Hanke camp, also told his
friend how he had witnessed
a woman being hog-tied and
hoisted up the wall, and then
both her breasts were sliced
off with a knife. She was not
the only one to die that way.

The documentation
Dokumente zur Austreibung
der Sudetendeutschen, while
having decidedly positive
things to say about the
conduct of the Russians,
shows the Czech Catholic
clergy in a proportionately
negative light. There were
local priests who forbade the
Germans to attend church
and refused to bless the
German dead, who were
dumped into a shallow pit in
some obscure corner, etc....

EARS CUT OFF, TONGUE

TORN OUT
Dean Johann Peschka of
Oberlipka describes the
events in the provincial
towns. It was the usual:
hours- and days-long torture,
followed by execution.
On May 22, 1945 at 7:00
a.m., the Dean reports,
busloads of armed partisans
arrived and searched the
houses. "All the men were
lined up in the city square,
ordered 'hands up!', and led
off to the provincial
administrative headquarters.
A Czech committee set the
number of blows each was to
receive - from 50 to 200
blows with steel canes and
whips. Many went half-mad
with the pain, and took hours
to crawl home covered in

blood. Youth Leader Adolf

Pospischil and the young
soldier Ernst Pabel of
Niederlipka, who had been
apprehended in the street,
were beaten to death. While
blessing the bodies I lifted
the canvas off them - their
heads and upper bodies had
been beaten to a bloody
pulp." The Dean then
proceeded to list the names
of the citizens who had been
beaten to death.
The teacher's wife - he
continues - had to sing the
German national anthem
while digging her own grave.
The partisans, who were
drunk, took poor aim and the
woman was hit in the
abdomen; still living, she fell
into the pit. She was put out
of her misery with bullets
from above her grave. Many
of those who had been forced
to watch fainted.
The execution had been
preceded by a body-search of
the people forced to act as
spectators, and they were
robbed of all watches and any
jewelry they happened to
wear.
All the Germans were
interned in the school yard.
On returning from their daily
forced labor, they were led off
for "evening gymnastics", a
euphemism for torture. We
would hear the screams of

the agonized victims, of

whom almost every day one
was beaten to death, until
one day a Russian Major
watched the goings-on from
one of the school windows,
and put a stop to these
"evening gymnastics".
In Eichstdt, the Dean
recounts, 12 people were
hanged from the linden trees
beside the church, but not
until after horrible tortures.
Among the victims was the
teacher Pischel, the mayor,
community leader Hentschel,
and master carpenter Safar,
for having adopted a German
name. Teacher Pischel's
mustache was burned off, his
eyes and nose were cut off
and his tongue torn out. In
Bohemian Petersdorf about
15 people were also tortured
to death.
Eight farmers, the Dean
reports, were shot in Lipka.
According to statements of
their neighbors, they were
stripped naked, tied up, and
beaten so dreadfully that
their screams could be heard
from afar. Then they were
shot. Shoemaker Winkler and
his wife had already escaped
across the border, but
returned at night to get some
clothes. They were seized and
tortured terribly; their
screams were blood-curdling.
Then they were marched off
to Grulich, where they were

locked for eight days into the

basement of the print-shop
Schiller and again gruesomely
abused. Inhabitants of
Grulich whom they met saw
their blood-shot eyes, swollen
faces and half-mad looks.
Afterwards they were shot
outside the cemetery,
together with foreman
bricklayer Berthold Seifert
and the peasant leader
Fichard Hentschel. The entire
village - eight-year-old
children and up - had to
watch this execution with
hands raised.
In Javoricka the partisans
rounded up the German
inhabitants of the
surrounding area, and
crowded them into the
forester's lodge and the
Bussau castle, where they
were murdered. The children
were driven into the
basements of the tenant
houses there, and shot in
those rooms. Over these
children's bodies the
murderers dumped the jam
they found in the pantries
there.
Homecomers, the Dean
reports, were simply gunned
down by the Czechs, and
buried in the fields or the
forest. "Two soldiers from
Austria came to see me
around noon one day in May
1945. I urged them to travel
only at night, and to stay in

hiding during the day. They

probably did not take my
advice. By the time I went to
bless some dead at the
cemetery that evening, they
had already been stood
against the cemetery wall
and shot."

DISMEMBERED ALIVE
While the expulsion was
already in full swing, the
killing continued in the
camps. A publication put out
by President Benes's party in
summer 1945 stated: There
are no good Germans, there
are only bad ones, and
worse. A Czech father who
fails to raise his children to
hate the Germans is not only
a bad patriot, he is also a bad
father... This hatred extended
also to the German antiFascists.
In the documentation
Dokumente zur Austreibung
der Sudetendeutschen,
Herbert Schernstein of Aussig
says, for example, that "the
Czechs exceeded by far the
concentration camp methods
of the Nazis, with which I had
become more than familiar
enough."
The Socialist Sudeten
Germans were, of course,
also given no consideration.
Following his deportation,
Johann Partsch of

Freudenthal testified how

even left-wing radicals from
the "German Revolutionary
Guard" were treated:
"On June 24, 1945 we were
arrested in Engelsberg by the
'German Revolutionary
Guard', taken to the camp,
and beaten there day and
night by the Czechs. The
beatings were repeated every
half-hour six or seven times
each night. All of us were
disfigured beyond
recognition.
"The worst day was July 4,
1945. That day the beatings
already began early in the
morning. Then 25 inmates
had to dig a hole. They were
constantly beaten while
digging. All of us had to
gather around the pit. Then
20 men were brought halfundressed from the barracks.
Ten of them had to kneel at
the pit. Ten Czechs with
submachine guns shot them
and threw them into the pit.
Then the second group of ten
followed, and thus it
continued. Among those who
were shot, I recognized the
Engelsberg teacher Hermann
Just, a very left-wing Social
Democrat; radio expert
Fochler of Freudenthal, an
anti-Fascist who had been a
member of the 'German
Revolutionary Guard'; and
the farmer Zimmermann of
Drrseifen, who had been in

a German concentration
camp. The grave digger
Gustav Riedl had been in the
first group, but he had only
been grazed. After three
minutes he stood up in the
pit and begged for another
bullet. A Czech fired his
submachine gun at him
again. But Riedl just could
not die. Another few minutes
later he stood up again in the
pit. They shot at him again
and this time he was dead.
Incidentally, in that camp I
also met the people from the
'German Revolutionary
Guard' who had arrested
me."
In this explosion of insanity,
killing became a matter of
whim. Sometimes in the
Adelsdorf camp every sixth
man in a line-up was shot, for
no reason, with no regard to
who he was, and regardless
of his "crime". It was simply a
desire to kill.
The guards indulged in
horrible kinds of "fun". A
physician who was interned in
this forest camp had turned
into one huge festering
wound; it literally covered
him from head to foot. To
move, he had to crawl
painfully on the ground, as he
had not been able to walk
any more for a long time.
Others were forced to lick out
his pus-filled wounds.
Inmates were forced to eat

excrement and had to lick

each other's genitals. One
night a number of the poor
souls in this camp hung
themselves from the beams
in the barracks; they could
simply no longer take the
physical and mental torture.
Excrement-covered gags
were popular among the
Czechs. Dr. Karl Gregor:
"Whenever I screamed or
groaned when they beat me,
they would shove a gag
covered with human
excrement into my mouth."
After being himself horribly
tortured, Otto Patek
witnessed the following in the
Joachimsthal camp:
"In the night of June 5-6,
1945, around 10:00 p.m.,
eleven or twelve Czechs came
to us in the dance hall. They
brought a bench, and
blankets with which the
windows were covered up. As
their first victim they grabbed
the master watchmaker
Johann Mller of St.
Joachimsthal, laid him on the
bench, cut his ears off with a
knife, stabbed his eyes out,
shoved a bayonet into his
mouth, broke out his teeth,
and broke his bones by
smashing his arms over his
knees and his legs over the
bench. Since he still lived,
they wrapped cable wire
twice around his throat and

dragged him around the hall

until his neck had pulled out
and the body showed no
more signs of life. During this
dragging-around a Czech
stood on the body to weight it
down. The body was reduced
to a lump of flesh, and was
wrapped in my coat and laid
in the middle of the hall. In
this manner six more were
murdered that night, three of
them Reich-German soldiers.
Whenever another one was
dead, we were again beaten
with rubber truncheons.
"The Germans murdered in
this way screamed horribly,
as they were being killed fully
conscious. Three inmates who
had to watch this went
insane. I myself suffered a
nervous breakdown."

SHOT IN THE NECK SURVIVED THANKS TO

URINE CURE
Father Reichenberger has
mentioned, among other
things, the case of a Sudeten
German who had emigrated
to France, joined the war on
the French side in 1939, and
for this reason was interned
by the Germans in 1940 in
the concentration camps
Schirmeck (Alsace) and
Kisslau. He was initially able
to move freely around Prague

in 1945. Here is his account.

"Many women had their
babies torn from their arms,
and saw their heads smashed
against the wall. Women,
children and men alike were
hung from their feet, reels of
film were lit beneath them,
the people were burned alive.
Others had ropes wrapped
around their necks and then
were tied to cars and
throttled and dragged to
death. Others in turn were
stoned and beaten to death.
The hunt was not for Nazis,
just for Germans.
"At that time I also saw the
Nusler School. The basement
rooms were virtually flooded
with blood, and on several
bodies I found bullet holes in
the neck. I myself was
arrested in Prague District XII
on May 11.
"At the police headquarters
people were being shot on a
continual basis. Individual
men were called out of the
cells and shot down in the
yard, under police
supervision, until a higher-up
police official turned up and
roared an order to the effect
that all this murdering would
have to cease.
"In the prison I met
Lieutenant Colonel Fuhrmann,
who at one time had
intervened to save a Czech

family from having to go to a

German concentration camp.
Among the inmates there was
also one engineer Schenk,
whom the German Special
Court in Prague had
sentenced in 1939 to ten
years' imprisonment and
complete expropriation
because he had secretly
employed two Jews in his
business. This Herr Schenk
had spent the entire six years
until his release in a large
concentration camp in
Germany. After being
liberated by the Americans he
returned to his home city,
Prague, reported to the police
station to register as
returnee, and was arrested
on the spot. I heard that he
later died.
"In the prison I was together
with a German soldier who
had been shot in the neck.
The bullet had entered the
neck, exited through the
mouth and smashed his
entire lower jaw. Since he
was still alive, he was thrown
into a cell and the well-known
Prague surgeon Dr. Rsler
managed to save his life by
washing out his wounds
several times a day with
urine and his handkerchief,
and spoon-feeding him the
thin soup he was given."

AMNESTY FOR ALL

CRIMES
The volume _Dokumentation
zur Austreibung der
Sudetendeutschen_ is an
avalanche of horror under
which a reader can almost
suffocate. It takes a real
effort of will to read the
reports of the people who
survived this time of horror.
Yet these reports that were
collected after 1945 are
actually rather subdued,
compared to their reality not only because language
simply has no means to
adequately reflect the
bestiality of the Czechs and
the torment they inflicted on
their victims.
Two factors become apparent
in an overall examination of
these events:
1. The orgy of murder
seemed to break out
spontaneously, but it had
been planned - not in its
extent and degree of
perversion, perhaps, but
certainly in principle. The
expulsion had been planned
by Benes as early as 1942.
Wenzel Jaksch, the Sudeten
German Socialist leader,
knew it and for that reason
distanced himself from Benes
in exile.
When the German defeat had
become inevitable, Benes, in

his radio address to the

Czech people, already
publicly announced the
liquidation of the Germans in
Czechoslovakia. As of May 5,
radio broadcasts incessantly
urged the Czech population to
kill and plunder. And the
Czech people took this urging
very seriously indeed.
2. And that is the second
factor to consider in
assessing these events: the
participation of the widest
conceivable circles of the
Czech population in these
mass crimes. All the survivor
reports show this clearly. The
Benes Decrees provided a
"legal foundation" for the
genocide. Any and all crimes
against Germans were
sanctioned. The amnesty
decree stated: "An act
intended as vengeance for
the actions of the occupiers
and their accomplices is not
unlawful, even if under other
circumstances it would be a
crime as per legal
regulations."
So anything and everything
was permissible to do to the
Germans. They were less
than animals for slaughter.
The "green light" for the
mass murder was followed by
other decrees ordering the
confiscation of any and all
German and Magyar property,
whether movable or not. This
was applied to such an extent

that the people remaining on

their farms almost starved to
death because they were not
permitted even to dig the
potatoes they themselves had
planted.
In the towns and villages the
mass torture and executions
died away in June 1945, but
in the concentration camps
they continued even in 1946.
The worst devils in human
form were the usually very
young "soldiers" of the
Revolutionary Guard
organized by Ludvik Svoboda,
who later became president
of Czechoslovakia.
Communists and Czech
National Socialists competed
in inventing ever more and
new torture methods.
One year after the armistice,
the murdering still raged on.
The Dokumente zur
Austreibung der
Sudetendeutschen reports
numerous cases where mass
executions in the camps still
took place even in 1946. At
that time, however, they were
no longer being carried out
before the public eye.
While it is repeatedly
mentioned that the Russians
often curbed the Czechs'
bestial frenzy, there are few
accounts of "good deeds" by
the Americans.
Frau Eleonore Hochberger of

Kosolup near Pilsen reports

that the Czech Revolutionary
Guardsmen had behaved in a
relatively restrained manner
at first. It was not until they
realized that they need not
worry about interference
from the Americans - that
they might do with the
Sudeten Germans as they
wished - that the torture and
murder began in the
American-occupied parts of
Czechoslovakia as well. Frau
Hochberger, whose husband
was tortured to death in the
prison Bory, tells of her
desperate attempts to obtain
help from the American
commandant. He did not
even consent to hear her. His
interpreter, however,
informed her frostily: "We
Americans haven't come to
help the Germans, we came
to liberate the Czechs from
you. We don't care a fig what
they do to you."
The American officials and
officers were aware of the
massacres, and in many
cases reacted cynically: don't
blame the murderer, blame
the victim.
In the publication Tragedy of
a People that appeared in
New York in 1946, Captain
Mike Short wrote: "It is
terrible here in the
Sudetenland. The Czech
cruelties are beyond all
measure. We are not

permitted to intervene in any

way, we are even ordered
from higher-up to tolerate
anything and everything the
Czechs do."
Admittedly, the atrocities in
the American-occupied
regions never reached the
same scale as they did
elsewhere in Czechoslovakia,
and there are exceptions
where even Americans
stepped in to curb the Czech
monstrosities.

THE CRUEL ORDER CAME

AT NIGHT
Please take a look around
your home, the home which
you have created with love
and care. It is your world.
Now imagine that a satanic
order forces you to leave this
paradise within ten or 15
minutes. Only with hand
luggage. No more than that!
Jewelry and valuables are to
be turned over to the
robbers. You and your
children must leave as
beggars, never to return.
This unspeakably awful fate
struck three million Sudeten
Germans, and a total of 15
million Germans. And hardly
anyone ever so much as
mentions it.
The specific instructions for
the expulsion varied from

case to case, but the

inhuman psychological cruelty
was uniform. The following
are some examples of the
expulsion orders.
On June 14, 1945 at 10:00
p.m., after curfew for the
Germans, the following order
from the military
commandant was announced
in Bohemian Leipa, in the
German and Czech
languages. The sleeping
populace naturally did not
learn of it until the morning
of June 15.
The order stated: "In the city
communities of Bohemian
Leipa, Alt-Leipa and Niemes,
all inhabitants of German
ethnicity and with no regard
to age or sex are to leave
their homes at 5:00 a.m. on
June 15, 1945 and to march
through the Kreuzgasse and
Bruhausgasse [streets] to
the gathering point by the
brewery in Ceske Lipe.
"Every individual to whom
this expulsion order applies
may take: a) food for seven
days, and b) the barest
necessities for personal use,
in a quantity which he or she
can personally carry.
"Valuables such as gold,
silver and all objects made of
these materials (rings,
brooches etc.), gold and
silver coins, bank books,

insurance policies, cash with

the exception of 100 RM per
person, as well as cameras,
are to be placed into a bag or
wrapped in a paper parcel,
accompanied by an exact
written inventory listing of
the contents."
And here comes the threat: "I
stress that every person will
be closely body-searched.
The contents of any luggage
will also be closely examined.
Any attempt to hide objects
of the aforementioned nature
on one's person, whether in
clothing or in shoes, or
elsewhere such as in handluggage, is futile and will be
punished by death."
And indeed, men, women and
children were searched down
to their bare skin. These
inspections often lasted days
and nights on end.
The order saw to everything:
pets shall remain where they
are, the order continues, and
a list of the animals is to be
included with the identifying
address and house keys that
must be handed in at the
gathering point.
And then, the main point for
the state that lusted after the
expellees' wealth: nonmovable property and assets,
such as machinery,
agricultural equipment and
tools, are to remain where

they are. Any damage

inflicted intentionally on such
property or assets will be
severely punished. Similarly,
any transfer of the items
mentioned to other persons
for purposes of safe-keeping
will be punished.
The expulsion order of
Kraslice, for example, stated:
Persons who are to be
transported shall leave their
homes in perfect order.
Permitted: hand-luggage of
at most 10 kilograms. All
remaining items are to be left
in their proper places in the
home. The luggage may not
be bundled in carpets or
slipcovers.
The order then announced
inspections, and severe
penalties. As a particular
nicety for the expelled
housewives, the order
stipulated that beds were to
be left with freshly changed
sheets to welcome the
robbers.

THE FLOOD OF
DEGENERACY
It will never be possible to
describe fully what happened
in the course of this sadistic
dance of death in
Czechoslovakia, for added to
these events that exceed the
bounds of all human measure

there is the "dilution effect"

of an inadequate frame of
reference.
When a brute commits
murder with a knife or gun,
his action can be expressed
and fully exposed in the
spotlight of public attention.
However, a monster in human
form that tortures and kills so
cruelly that even to write
about it curdles the ink in
one's pen - the details of
such a person's deeds remain
in semi-dark. The real extent
of his crime can never be
illumined because it is simply
inconceivable to imagine it in
anything but a watered-down
form.
To date, Czech history has
profited from this "dilution
effect".
This book has dispensed with
emotionalism in its accounts,
and deliberately retained the
simple, almost monotonous
wording of the witness
statements and transcripts.
After all, who could possibly
describe realistically the
screaming of tortured people,
or what battered lumps of
flesh must have felt as they
had to dig their own graves
before the submachine guns
of their murderers? One's
breath catches at the thought
of the agony of the mothers
whose children were nailed to

poster boards in Prague.

But the horror need not even
be bloody. What kind of
degenerate humanity is it
that "fed" the German
wounded from buckets full of
human excrement before
beating them to death - as
happened in Wilson Train
Station in Prague?
All this is so unspeakably
gruesome - but is it right that
this flood of degeneracy and
cruelty should be graciously
covered up with the mantle of
silence because the crime is
too terrible to be faced?
And what this book describes
is only a drop in the ocean of
death and agony and
perverted madness!
The bottom line is that, in
that year of the "Final
Solution" in Czechoslovakia,
241,000 Sudeten Germans
died a violent death or
succumbed to starvationinduced typhus. There is
hardly a Sudeten German
family that has not lost at
least one relative to these
events. The number of
murdered Blitzmdchen,
nurses, and Wehrmacht
members (wounded or not)
who fell into the hands of the
Czech murderers will never
be precisely known. 200,000
is a conservative estimate.

The books of Father Emanuel

Reichenberger - especially
Europa in Trmmern, which
already appeared in the first
post-War years, published by
Stocker-Verlag - reveal a
kaleidoscope of horror. Father
Reichenberger, whom the
National Socialists had forced
to emigrate to the United
States, became the expellees'
foremost spokesman. The
famous Sudeten German
author Bruno Brehm wrote of
this emigrant who tried to
make the victors' world face
their post-War crimes: "He
began to shout into the
world's ears, which it covered
with both hands, for though it
had listened so eagerly for
atrocities committed by the
Germans, it now cared not to
hear about the heinous
atrocities committed against
them."
Bruno Brehm wrote these
words in 1953! Almost half a
century later, little has
changed.
The mass media remain
silent. The "White Book"
compiled under the Adenauer
Administration and
documenting the crimes in
Poland, Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia has been
placed under lock and key by
our current Socialist
government at Bonn. Its
publication is prohibited!

The Austrian Federal

President traveled to Prague,
and one Austrian newspaper
lauded him as "courageous
President". What for?
Because he had visited the
Archbishop? Does that take
courage? The expellees might
justly have expected some
other sign of courage from
him. But such a sign has not
yet come - neither from
Vienna nor from Bonn.

THE OMINOUS "YES" TO

GENOCIDE
How is it possible that the
world judges mass outbreaks
of man's inhumanity to man
by such divergent standards?
How is it that Germany's own
citizens are horrified only by
Auschwitz but not by Aussig,
or that the Federal President
visiting Theresienstadt
remembers only the victims
of the Nazis, but not (or at
least not visibly) the Sudeten
Germans tortured to death
there?
The incomprehensible already
begins with the eerie alliance
between Western Democracy
and Bolshevism. Regarding
their cooperation in the
expulsion and butchery of 18
million Germans, Father
Reichenberger observed: no
democrat was bothered by
the concurrence with Stalin's

bloody dictatorship and no

Christian by the collaboration
with the Antichrist. Roosevelt
strove to gain Stalin's
unreserved trust. Father
Reichenberger had already
realized the reason for this
during his exile in London,
and later in the United
States. As Brehm wrote:
Reichenberger soon saw that
in America very little if any
distinction was made
between Germans and
National Socialists, and that it
was the Germans as a whole
whom one hated, the
Germans as a whole whom
one wanted to destroy, and
the Germans as a whole
whom one believed capable
of all evil and on whom one
wished all evil. This was the
attitude that led to the fact
that after 1945 Czechs who
had participated in massacres
of Germans could live with
impunity in the Americanoccupied zone of Germany.
One infamous example is the
case of the Czech Antonin
Homolka. One of his recorded
acts in the blood frenzy of
May 1945 was that he had
snatched a German mother's
baby out of its carriage,
wedged the child head-down
between his knees, grabbed
hold of both legs and literally
tore the baby's body apart. In
1949 he was arrested in
Stuttgart by German police,
but the Americans ordered

his release and transfer to an

IRA-controlled migration
camp.
In those days crimes
committed by the Germans
were all that mattered - the
crimes committed against
them mattered not.
Fine - but how is the situation
today, 50 years later, in Bonn
and Vienna? How is the state
of affairs in our television and
almost all mass media? Is
their silence about what
happened in 1945 a sign of
collective paranoia? A fear of
being accused of attempting
to distract from Belsen and
Auschwitz by telling the truth
about Allied crimes? After all,
it is the spirit of re-education
that only Germans are ever
to sit in the prisoner's dock of
history. That is why
schoolchildren are only ever
taught about the Holocaust
and never about the Banat,
never about Prague.
In fact, the gigantic post-War
crime of the expulsion of 15
million people and the
murder of almost 3 million
Germans has been
successfully prevented from
seeping into our collective
present-day awareness.
There are not a few
contemporaries who try to
see the barbaric butchering of
the German men, women and

children in Czechoslovakia as
something like an
understandable reaction of
the Czechs to Lidice.
In Lidice 132 men were
executed. There is no just or
reasonable relationship, and
no comparison at all,
between the extent of this
reprisal and that of the
outbreak of insane
chauvinism manifested by the
Czechs.
Certainly, none of this would
have happened without Hitler.
But what kind of judges are
they who are by far more
cruel, bestial and inhuman
than the accused?
Anyone who tries to hush up
and justify the happenings in
Czechoslovakia and in the
East and Southeast in effect
sanctions this genocide.

THE SUDETENLAND: A
REGION OF DECAY
Up until only a few years ago,
the entire Czech population
unanimously considered the
expulsion of the Germans to
have been inevitable and
just. No public voice spoke up
to the contrary, no
intellectual condemned the
theory of German collective
guilt and the crimes of 1945.
33 years had to go by before

even one lone voice spoke

out, abroad, in December
1978. In the Czech
publication Svedectvi (Paris)
a Slovak political scientist
published a remarkable essay
that may be regarded as a
first call for soul-searching even though one swallow
doesn't yet make a summer,
as the saying goes.
This publication revealed that
in the early 1970s a domestic
survey had been conducted
about the expulsion. Its
findings were kept strictly
secret. Probably the survey
had been prompted by the
normalization of relations
with the Federal Republic of
Germany that had begun
around that time.
In this survey, one-third of
the persons polled had
condemned the "transfer".
"Transfer" is the term used in
Czechoslovakia today to gloss
over the criminal uprooting of
an entire people out of a
centuries-old civilization.
One-third called the
"transfer" a "superfluous,
economically and morally
harmful fact". But publicly the
topic is still strictly taboo in
the Czechoslovakia of today.
The publication bluntly
described the phase of mass
liquidations and also criticized
the hatred that led to such

grotesque measures as
changes in orthography:
"German" and "Germany"
had to be spelled without
initial capitals. Hegel and
Kant, Goethe and Schiller,
Mozart and Beethoven were
banned.

SUDETEN GERMAN
EXPELLEES
From his critical observation
of the events, the author
concluded: in Czech society
the forcible expulsion of the
Germans resulted not only in
the destruction of human,
national and state values, but
also in a corrosion of the
sense for creation and
maintenance of material
assets, of which an immense
amount went to rack and ruin
on Czech national territory.
Entire export branches of
light industry (glass,
porcelain, ceramics, jewelry,
textiles etc.) that had been
primarily based in Northern
Bohemian borderlands
disintegrated. Thousands of
acres of arable land turned
into wasteland - either the
army had appropriated it, or
it had been left unworked too
long. Hundreds of towns and
villages vanished, weeds and
scrub took over the fields, the
meadows turned acidic. Dead
chimneys jutted out of
crumbling factories. The

borderlands grew desolate

despite financial injections by
the government.
The mass expulsion of the
Germans of Czechoslovakia
was a flagrant violation of a
fundamental human right:
the right to one's homeland.
If we today zealously
proclaim support for human
rights and fight to preserve
them - the article stated then we cannot take the right
to one's homeland as
pertaining only to the
present; it must be a
postulate of primary
importance in the historical,
retrospective sense as well.

Sudeten German expellees.

THE CRIME OF
POTSDAM
In his book _Europa in
Trmmern_, Father
Reichenberger recalls that
Hitler had also considered a
resettlement of the Czechs.
"But," Reichenberger wrote,

"Hitler had stated that the

resettlement of seven million
Czechs would take a century.
The Humanists of Potsdam
expelled twice that number in
one year." They had decreed
that the resettlement should
be carried out in an "orderly"
and "humane" fashion. What
a colossal mockery of those
affected!
Details of the "humane"
genocide did not remain
unknown to the state
chancelleries in London and
Washington. In August 1945
Churchill said in the House of
Commons, "a tragedy of
immense proportions is
playing out behind the Iron
Curtain." And as per the
Times of November 5, 1945,
England's Foreign Minister
Ernest Bevin commented in
the House of Commons with
regard to the effects of the
Potsdam Pact of July 17,
1945: "Great God, it's the
height of human madness. It
was a dreadful spectacle."
There were American voices
too in 1946. But none of the
governments involved
thought for even a moment
to put a stop to the "dreadful
spectacle".
The expulsion revealed the
fact that National Socialism
was not the issue at all. The
program of extermination
was aimed at the Germans. It

was not Nazis who were

being resettled - it was
everyone who happened to
have been born of a German
mother.
The decree of banishment
inflicted by the democratic
and Communist barbarians
struck 2.3 million East
Prussians, 0.6 million citizens
of Danzig, 3.1 million Lower
Silesians, 3.4 million Upper
Silesians, 0.9 million from
Brandenburg, 1 million
Pomeranians, 0.3 million
West Prussians, 1 million
from Posen and 1 million
from the Warthegau - a total
of 13.6 million German
people. Added to this were 3
million Sudeten Germans,
and 1.5 million from Hungary,
Yugoslavia and Romania. That
makes more than 18 million
Germans. More than 2.5
million of them lost their lives
in the expulsion.
To truly get a sense of the
extent of this Crime of
Potsdam, it is necessary to
see these figures in
comparison to other
countries. Austria has a
population of 7 million;
Denmark, Sweden and
Norway together total about
15 million. Switzerland has
4.5 million inhabitants. Twice
as many people as live in all
of Austria were driven
destitute from their homes.

It was fortunate for Europe

that the beggared 15 million
that were thrust into the sea
of debris that was then
Germany did not become a
hearth of unrest, an explosive
element such as the three
million Palestinians became in
more recent days. But the
biological consequences of
overpopulation do already
cast dark shadows in the
form of the rapid decline of
the German birth rate.
In East and West alike, the
subject of the expulsion is
still a taboo. The Sudetenland
is a wasteland.
Czechoslovakia does feel the
loss of the economic strength
of three million inhabitants
whose competence and
unparalleled industriousness
had ever been exemplary.
Countless Sudeten German
voices have given a powerful
echo to this publication. They
had one central theme: a
peaceable attitude, not a
word of revenge. Certainly
many of them are tired and
resigned. But at the core of
the Sudeten German people
the will to preserve their
ethnic substance beats
strongly.
So does the demand for
compensation.
This demand and the
insistence on the right to

one's homeland will no doubt

pass on to the next
generation. "The homecoming
of the expelled," said Otto
Habsburg, "is not only a
postulate of common sense.
It is also the prerequisite for
a Christian renewal of our
part of the world, for that
practical application of the
divine laws of justice in public
and private life without which
Communism can never be
spiritually overcome."
As the late Dr. Lodgman, the
Sudeten Germans' faithful
Eckart, telegraphed Father
Reichenberger, God's
champion of justice: "God
lives yet, and His day will
come."

OUR NAMELESS DEAD

CALL OUT TO US
What now? The expulsion of
the economically highly
efficient Germans, coupled
with 50 years of Socialism,
has turned Czechoslovakia
into a poorhouse. The Czechs
will never be able to replace
the material goods, worth
many thousands of millions of
dollars, which they robbed
from the Germans. The
murderers can no longer be
apprehended. What the
Germans can demand,
however, is the right to their
homeland. But even that

demand earns them only

hatred: "Not so much as a
rock belongs to the Germans
- German property must
remain Czech!", the headlines
scream. A recent line is that
the Germans ought to be
grateful that they were
expelled, since this saved
them from the yoke of
Communism. The expellees
grew richer in the free world thus, they ought to be
grateful for their expulsion!
Not a word is wasted on the
sadistic mass murder of
241,000 Sudeten Germans,
much less on the hundreds of
thousands of German soldiers
who, unarmed, fell to the
Czechs' hands and knives and
submachine guns. Most
young Czechs today do not
even know about the orgy of
sadism. For decades they
have been taught in their
schools that the Germans
only arrived with Hitler, and
left again in 1945. That the
Germans had already settled
the Sudetenland before
America was even discovered
is a fact that even some
adults in Czechoslovakia do
not know. The genocide has
been hushed up perfectly.
Now that the struggle for a
new order at the heart of
Europe is beginning, the
great and treacherous silence
about the crimes of 1945 and
1919 must be broken at last.
Europe is to become a Europe

of regions. Why should there

not be a German and a Czech
region at the heart of
Europe? Hundreds of
thousands of dead, thrown
like dogs into sorry excuses
for graves, without a death
certificate or even a cross,
have a right to some last
respects. The vast army of
the nameless dead holding
their admonitory vigil in the
stolen soil of their native land
calls out to us....

APPENDIX:
Comments on
Contemporary History
The occupation of the
Protectorate by Hitler was
only one of many political
upheavals on the territory of
former Czechoslovakia
(others were the
independence of Slovakia,
and thus the dissolution of
the Czech multi-ethnic state),
but none of these
developments succeeded in
obtaining the still-withheld
minority rights of the five
ethnic groups that had been
forced into this state without
any plebiscite after the First
World War. Even Hitler's
severe warning in his "Sports
Palace speech" of September
26, 1938, urging that the
minorities living in that state
must at long last be granted

their right to selfdetermination, fell on deaf

ears in the government at
Prague.
In Professor Dr. Berthold
Rubin's book _War
Deutschland allein schuld?_
(Munich: DSZ-Verlag, 1987)
we learn on page 153: "...
and further, I have assured
him [Chamberlain] that in the
very instant when
Czechoslovakia solves its
problems - that is, when
Czechoslovakia has dealt with
its minorities, and peacefully
so, not by oppression - in
that instant I will lose all
interest in the Czech state
and we will guarantee its
borders. We don't want any
Czechs, but we do want a
full, satisfactory and final
settlement of the minority
question, no uneasy
compromises, and absolutely
no constant trouble spot at
the heart of Europe!" (The
last sentence is always
studiously omitted by other
publications!)
Ultimately, the victorious
powers of World War I - the
midwives to the Paris treaties
- were the initiating force
behind this hearth of unrest
in Europe (compare today's
Yugoslavia!), together with
the chauvinistic Czech
nationalists who had had 20
years to solve the minority
question in Czechoslovakia in

a fashion satisfactory to all.

But, idle and spineless, they
wasted the time so precious
to all concerned, and were
not interested in a serious
solution. With his well-known
Eight Points, Konrad Henlein,
the leader of Sudeten
Germans, also attempted in
vain to make the Czech
government see reason at the
Karlsbad Party Convention on
April 24, 1938.
It should be our aim to make
the facts of this ethnic
martyrdom - hushed up for
so long, but now beginning to
break through into the light known to the general public
that is starved for truth.
Cover-ups serve no-one! And
truth is indivisible.
It is especially important that
new editions and reprints of
publications be revised to
reflect historical documents
that have only recently
become known after having
been locked away in archives
for, in many cases, very long
periods of time. This is the
only way to do justice to
history - and such revisions
would be entirely
unnecessary if uncomfortable
facts had not been
suppressed for decades in the
first place.

APPENDIX:
Convention on

International Law, Bonn,

1961
Excerpts from "Das Recht auf
die Heimat
im historisch-politischen
Proze", F. H. E. W. du Buy.
Euskirchen: Verlag fr
zeitgenssische
Dokumentation GmbH, 1974.
The debates about the
questions regarding the right
to one's homeland were
continued at the convention
of experts on international
law on October 28 and 29,
1961 in Bonn. The results of
this convention were
formulated as seven basic
principles, as follows:
"I. In the recent past, and in
various regions of the world,
peoples and ethnic groups
were expelled from their
ancestral homes. These acts
of violence are in clear
violation of fundamental
principles of modern national
and international law.
"II. The expulsion of peoples
or of ethnic and religious
groups represents a flagrant
violation of the right to selfdetermination. The right to
self-determination has been
recognized by the United
Nations as a leading principle
of order; by virtue of this
fact, as well as through

practical application by
nations over the past
decades, it has become a
general and binding
fundamental of international
law. It is the right of peoples
and population groups to
freely determine their
political, economic, social and
cultural status. In this
context, peoples are not to be
regarded as fluctuating
masses that may be pushed
from one region to another
for political, economic, police
or other considerations, but
as resident communities that
are closely tied to their
settlement area. Thus, the
right to self-determination
includes the prohibition of
expulsions. Not even a
conquered people may be
denied the right to selfdetermination.
"III. The international
conventions of war include
the prohibition of deportation
of the population of an
occupied region by the
occupying power. Complete
agreement on this was
already expressed at the
1907 Peace Conference in
The Hague. Thus, Article 49
of the Geneva Convention of
August 12, 1949 about the
Protection of Civilian Persons
in Time of War did not create
a new law, but rather codified
existing law.
"Attention is also drawn to

Article 49, Section 6,

according to which an
occupying power may also
not deport or resettle parts of
its own civilian population
into a region occupied by it.
"IV. Under modern
international law, no state
may deport its own citizens
from its national territory, nor
deny them entry into said
national territory. This
prohibition applies also in
cases of changes in territorial
sovereignty. In such a case,
the resident population may
not be denied citizenship in
the acquiring state, insofar as
it had previously also held
native status. This protects
the population from expulsion
across the newly-fixed border.
"V. The question whether
expelling nations and host
nations may conduct
population transfers in an
internationally lawful manner
through national treaties
cannot be answered with
mere reference to the
Potsdam Pact. This Pact of
August 2, 1945 - whose
Article XIII ordered a humane
carrying-out of the expulsion
of the Germans from Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Hungary
that had in fact already
begun at full scale several
months earlier, under the
sovereign responsibility of the
expelling states - had been
concluded by the occupying

powers, namely Great Britain,

the Soviet Union and the
United States. The condition
imposed therein on Germany,
to accept the expelled
Germans, thus does not
represent an internationally
lawful acknowledgment of the
expulsion on the part of
Germany, since Germany was
not a party to this Pact.
"VI. Deportations within the
boundaries of a national
territory also violate the
fundamentals of a modern
system of government.
"International law demands
that nations respect a
minimum standard of human
rights, and this standard is
characterized by a
progressive acceptance of
universal human rights.
"In 1956-57 in the Soviet
Union, for example, mass
deportations of a state's own
citizens were ruled to be an
inadmissible violation of
constitutional rights and to be
in conflict with the principles
of Marxist-Leninist nationality
politics, and were reversed
for a part of the persons
affected.
"The legal position following
from the stated principles of
national and international law
for peoples, population
groups and their members
has come to be known as

"the right to one's

homeland". Thus, this right is
founded on positive
regulations of contemporary
national and international law
as well as on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Its violation is a crime under
international law.
"Every prohibition - and thus
also the prohibition of forced
resettlement and mass
deportations - safeguards a
condition perceived by man's
sense of justice to be
valuable and worth
preserving. In the event of
attempted unlawful
interference with this
condition, those who benefit
from the preservation of said
condition have the
fundamental right to demand
the cessation of such
interference, or - if
interference has been carried
through - to seek redress. In
the case at hand, such a right
to redress takes the form of a
right to permission to
remigrate, and to assistance
in doing so, or alternatively
as a right to claim
compensation. This coincides
with the decisions of the
standing International Court,
as these have found
expression especially in the
Chozow case."
At this convention it was
determined that there are
several principles of

international law whose

purpose it is to afford persons
protection from forced
resettlement and expulsion
from their homeland. The
term "right to one's
homeland" has come to stand
for the legally protected right
to remain in one's domicile
unmolested. This right to
one's homeland can thus be
regarded as the collective
term for several principles
recognized by international
law, and accordingly, the
violation of this right
represents a crime under
international law.
The right to one's homeland
is intended to afford a person
the right to remain in his
domicile without undue
harassment. If this right is
infringed upon, he has a
rightful claim to restitution,
which may be understood as
a right to restitutio in
integrum, ie. in this case the
right to return to one's
homeland. If a return to one's
old homeland is not possible,
the injured party has the
right to claim compensation.
Principle 5 makes reference
to the Potsdam Pact of
August 2, 1945. The
substance of this Principle is
legally perfect, but it would
go beyond the scope of this
study to examine the Pact in
greater detail.

SECOND CONVENTION ON
INTERNATIONAL LAW, BONN,
1964
At the second convention of
experts on international law,
which was held on April 24
and 25, 1964, again in Bonn,
the jurists debated further
issues regarding the right to
one's homeland. As usual,
the convention was closed by
recording the conclusions
reached in these debates.
The voluminous and very
carefully worded conclusions
represent another decisive
stage in the academic
resolution of the problems
associated with the right to
one's homeland. Due to their
great significance, these
conclusions are reproduced
here in extenso:
I. 1.The condition constituting
the foundation of the concept
"right to one's homeland", a
condition perceived by man's
sense of justice to be
valuable and worth
preserving, consists of
everyone being able to reside
unmolested at his domicile
and within his social unit,
with the certainty of being
able to remain in such
condition for as long as his
will is freely directed thus.
In this context, terminology is
defined as follows:
a) "domicile": the place
where a person regularly

resides because the focus of

his life and social structure is
itself located there;
b) "social unit": the people
whose domicile is located
within a specific spatial area
("homeland") and who are
linked to each other there
through tradition and a
multitude of social relations;
[...]

Monsignore Dr. E. J.
Reichenberger,
Father of the Expelled.

APPENDIX:
God Lives: His Day Will
Come!
Ten Thousand Expellees
Cheer Father Reichenberger
Reprint from the "Sd-Ost
Tagespost", Graz, June 10,

1952.
On Sunday the Graz
Fairgrounds surrounding
Industrial Hall were an
unfamiliar sea of color. An
observer felt transported into
a great folk festival that
might just as easily have
taken place somewhere in the
Sudetenland, in Transylvania,
in Backa or in the Banat.
Some ten thousand
expellees, many wearing their
neat and colorful ethnic
costumes, had answered the
call of the Steiermark
"Auxiliary for the Sudeten
Germans" to join together in
a great summer festival to
document their loyalty to
their homeland, and to greet
and thank the indefatigable
champion of their rights, Dr.
h.c. Father Reichenberger.
Monsignore Dr. E. J.
Reichenberger,
Father of the Expelled
The faces lined by a harsh
fate and a life of hard work lit
up as Father Emanuel
Reichenberger appeared in
their midst, accompanied by
Provincial Governor Krainer
and Dr. Gorbach, President of
the National Council, and a
storm of applause greeted
the Provincial Governor when
he stepped up on the
platform, decorated
splendidly with the

Steiermark flags and the

coats-of-arms of the ethnic
German Welfare and Cultural
Associations, to address the
expellees.
"Dear festival guests - or, I
am sure I may say, dear
fellow-countrymen! The war
forged us all into a
community united by
suffering. You have been
particularly hard-hit because
you lost your homeland, but I
believe I can say that you
have found another home
with us - a modest and poor
one, perhaps, but a home
nevertheless. Tens of
thousands of Germans settled
in the Steiermark, and my
only wish is that you may feel
at home here with us. I also
appeal to all inhabitants of
the Steiermark to do their
part to ensure that everyone
who comes to us in need will
be made to feel at home, and
that everyone do their best to
help us all become an
indivisible community in this
land. Let us all take home
with us, from this gathering
dedicated to Father
Reichenberger, the foremost
champion of freedom and
justice, the resolve to follow
his example, so that after
seven long years our land too
shall finally become free, and
true freedom and true justice
shall return to us!"
The Students Still Have

Ideals!
After a brief address, in which
he stressed how the relations
between the expellees and
the local population were
growing ever closer, Dr. Prexl,
the provincial representative
of the Auxiliary for the
Sudeten Germans, presented
elaborate certificates to
Father Reichenberger and to
Otto Hoffmann-Wellenhoff,
the head of the cultural
department of the Alpenland
station, for their great
services to the expelled.
Walter Schleser, the Chair of
the Expelled Students in
Germany, conveyed to Father
Reichenberger the
congratulations of the Federal
Committee of Expelled
Students and the Welfare and
Cultural Association of
Expellees in West Germany.
In his address, Dr. Rudolf
Lodgman von Auen - former
Provincial Governor of
German Bohemia, Member of
the Vienna National
Assembly, and Speaker of the
Sudeten German Welfare and
Cultural Assembly in
Germany - recalled that on
October 29, 1918 the
Sudeten Germans had
declared themselves a
province of German Austria,
but that this union was
destroyed one year later,
contrary to all common
sense. He presented Father

Reichenberger with a plaque,

with the request that he
would continue to bear the
fate of the German expellees
in heart and mind.
Dr. h.c. Emanuel
Reichenberger himself then
stepped on the podium, to
the seemingly endless cheers
and applause of the
assembly. "Potsdam has
legalized the robbery and
theft that was perpetrated on
you when Germany and
Austria lay crushed and
powerless - legalized it in
violation of all divine and
human right. For long years
these crimes had to be
hushed up so that the Allies
of yesterday would not be
insulted. Today no less, the
expelled do not want hatred
and revenge - it would pave
the way, not for the
furtherance of a new world,
but for its downfall. All they
seek is justice - and it is
sheer demagoguery to try to
slander this cry for justice as
neo-Nazism or as expression
of an unbridled hatred. The
expellees do not demand
special courts, they demand a
verdict from impartial
sources, they demand
nothing more than that the
solemn promises made in the
Universal Declaration of
Human Rights be kept. The
enormous problems created
by the expulsion of millions of
people cannot be solved by

Germany and Austria alone;

the legal obligation to solve
them is incumbent upon
those who unleashed this
injustice in the first place: the
signatories of Potsdam.
Concerns About the Younger
Generation
"I am concerned about the
future if we do not succeed in
involving the younger
generation in building our
new homeland. Young people,
healthy and able to work,
must join in the build-up
process here. If I had a
decisive say I would forbid
the emigration of healthy and
able people. Emigration is not
a solution, and the conditions
under which it occurs are
often much like a sort of
trafficking in human beings."
Father Reichenberger
concluded with the words:
"God lives yet, and His day
will come!"

EPILOGUE
Human Blood
Dripped From the
Knife of Hate
by Alexander Hoyer
In 1919, after the peace
dictate of St. Germain which

forcibly incorporated the

German regions of Bohemia,
Moravia and Austrian Silesia
into the newly founded state
"Czechoslovakia", a journalist
from the French publication
Matin asked the first Czech
President, Thomas Garrique
Masaryk, whether this forced
subjugation of what were
then 3.6 million Germans to
his small multi-ethnic state
did not perhaps really
represent an injustice, a
political act of force, a
national incapacitation.
With a disdainful gesture
Masaryk replied: "Don't worry
about that! In twenty years
we will have assimilated
them, they will speak our
language and will have long
forgotten their heritage."
Well, despite inhumane
political, economic and social
oppression the three-andone-half million Germans
living in the Czechoslovakia of
those days (they called
themselves Sudeten
Germans) did not become
assimilated at all. On the
contrary. In the course of 20
years they responded to the
intolerable restriction of even
their most fundamental rights
by uniting in a struggle of
defense which, in autumn
1938, resulted in the
rectification of the injustices
of St. Germain through
British and French(!)

intervention. As per the

Anglo-French Note of
September 19, 1938, the
Czechs had to return the
German regions to the
German Reich. The
government at Prague
expressly accepted this
obligation on September 21,
1938.
The Sudetenland was free,
and once again sovereign
German territory after 20
years of bondage. It was the
only correct solution. An
injustice that screamed to
heaven had been righted, and
the world heaved a sigh of
relief - but Czech President
Dr. Eduard Benes wanted war,
not this peaceful solution.
Their historical lies of
1918/19 that had enabled
them to occupy the Sudeten
regions had ended in failure.
And this was what the
Czechs, poisoned by an
incredible chauvinism, could
not get over. The Czech
national soul seethed with
rage and hate, but did not
find a vent until May 1945,
after the military defeat of
the German Reich in World
War Two.
For the Czechs it was the
hour of revenge. And the
Allies played the Sudeten
Germans right into their
hands once again. The
inferiority complexes that had

been growing in the Czech

people for centuries pushed
them to a terrible discharge
of their pent-up fury.
The dreadful monstrosities
mentioned in this book are a
mere fraction of what
happened in those days.
German industriousness and
German intellect, working
tirelessly for centuries, had
made Bohemia and Moravia
an economic and cultural
jewel. Having got their hands
on it a second time, the
Czechs turned it into a field of
blood. How will it fit into the
European Community now?
The screams from hell went
unheard by the world, both
then and today. To date, even
the Federal Presidents and
Federal Chancellors of
Germany and Austria alike
have ignored them.
How will it sound when Czech
functionaries of the United
Nations begin to push for the
fulfillment of the Benes
Decrees which are still gospel
to them, and Central Europe
is to be ethnically cleansed of
the Germans - in accordance
with their revered former
President Benes's appeal:
"Drive the Germans from
their houses, factories and
farms, and leave them
nothing but one handkerchief
to weep into!"

Original edition:
Schreie aus der Hlle
ungehrt. Das
totgeschwiegene Drama der
Sudetendeutschen.
Sersheim: Hartmann-Verlag,
1998.
Translated by Victor Diodon.
Emphasis by coloring of text
was added by The Gnostic
Liberation Front

This book is available in

German from the
Scriptorium
For more information
please go to the
Scriptorium web site

Reproduced From The

Superb Web Site Which
We Urge You To Vistit:

The
Scriptorium

MASSACRE in CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Newly Discovered Film Shows Post-War Executions

By Jan Puhl 06/02/2010
...It has long been known that German civilians fell victim to Czech excesses
immediately following the Nazi surrender at the end of World War II.
But a newly discovered video shows one such massacre in brutal detail.
And it has come as a shock to the Czech Republic .

Please visit our APOCALYPSE AT DRESDEN Page as well as our

other Pages
dealing with Allied Hypocrisy, Lies, Disinformation and outright
anti-German Propaganda:

After the Reich:

The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
BOOK REVIEW ARTICLE
This article was published in the Spring 2009 issue of The Journal of Social,
Political and Economic Studies, pp. 95-110

Revisiting the "Good War's" Aftermath:

Emerging Truth in an Ocean of Myth
Dwight D. Murphey / Wichita State University, retired
After the Reich:
The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
Giles MacDonogh / Basic Books, 2007 Read Book Review

The Genocidal Morgenthau Plan

Eisenhower's Death Camps
Anti German Hate Propaganda
Allied War Crimes Page I
Allied War Crimes Page II
My Father Rudolf Hess Page I
The Death Of Rudolf Hess Page II

Revised: November 05, 2014 .

to Home Page

Communication:

JerryHaff1963(at)gmail.com

Go

Go to Index of All Articles Pages

Read the Disclaimer

Last modified: November 05, 2014 Copyright 1999 - 2008 All rights reserved.
[Gnostic Liberation Front]. www.gnosticliberationfront.com