Czech Atrocities in World World Two

 

World War II is deeply associated with atrocities, the most well known focusing on the Holocaust. The systematic extermination of Jews – Hitler’s “Final Solution,” must never be forgotten. Ethnic hatreds fostered by the war affected millions of others as well. As the war was ending, Germans living in the eastern zones like Poland and Silesia fled the approach of the Red Army. The liberation of Europe by the Allies from Nazi domination led to ethnic cleansing during which hundreds of thousands died. Some of the worst atrocities occurred in Czechoslovakia where liberated Czechs saw an opportunity to repay Germans for the thousands of their countrymen killed by the Nazis.

 

“Death to All Germans! Death to Occupiers!”

 

Czech revenge began in Prague May 5, 1945. Although the written record documents these atrocities (Giles MacDonogh details them in his book, After the Reich [1]), the German news daily Spiegel revealed June 2, 2010 that a newly discovered film, hidden for years, has been recovered. The events in the film took place on May 10, 1945 in Prague. According to Jan Puhl, writing in Spiegel, the film shows Germans being taken out of a cinema, led to a nearby meadow, and shot. The wounded were crushed to death by a Red Army truck.

 

The collective cry, “Death to all Germans” signaled massive reprisals against all Germans. Giles MacDonogh likens the killing frenzy to the days of the French Reign of Terror. He writes that the Czechs were backed by the Red Army and believed that the Allies “would turn a blind eye to all that happened.”

 

The Aussig Bridge and the Brno Death March

 

The first casualty on the Aussig Bridge was a young German woman with her baby. Surrounded and clubbed to death, she and the baby were thrown into the Elbe River. Writer Douglas Botting [2] states that, “…within three hours up to 2,700 more Germans had been murdered on the bridge or in the main square…” Other Germans were taken to the former Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt, which was being used to incarcerate Germans.

 

Rhona Churchill, writing in the London Daily Mail, detailed the May 30, 1945 Brno death march when 25,000 men, women and children were marched to the Austrian border but refused entry. Her article begins, “Here is what happened when young revolutionaries of the Czech National Guard decided to ‘purify’ the town.” Unable to go anywhere, the people were placed in a field. With sparse food rations, no shelter, and disease, many rapidly died.

 

In many cities, Germans were dispossessed of all assets, forbidden to receive ration cards for food, and held to a curfew. MacDonogh writes that, “There was to be no mercy for old men, women or children – even for German dogs.” Some Germans were used as human torches.

 

The Desire to Forget Atrocities

 

In September 2009, Spiegel writer Hans-Ulrich Stoldt reported on a proposed memorial in the Czech town of Postoloprty. The memorial was to commemorate the deaths of 2,000 Germans on June 6, 1945 in a field near the town. Made to dig their own graves, the Postoloprty and Zatec Germans were shot and buried in mass graves. The killers relied on orders from the military. According to Stoldt, General Spaniel advised the Czechs to “clean” the “region of its ethnic Germans…The fewer of them that remain, the fewer enemies we’ll have.”

 

But for the current inhabitants, a memorial is frowned upon. Many simply want to forget. World War II caused suffering for millions and brought to the surface long-held ethnic hatreds. That suffering also involved Germans, from women and children bombed out in the cities, to ethnic cleansing in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps one positive goal of the European Union was to forever banish ethnic hatreds and bring together all nationalities as one.

 

References:

 

[1] Douglas Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich: Germany 1945-1949 (NY: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1985

[2] Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation (NY: Basic Books, 2007)

Jan Puhl, “Newly Discovered Film Shows Post-War Executions,” Spiegel On Line, June 2, 2010

Hans-Ulrich Stoldt, “Czech Town Divided over How to Commemorate 1945 Massacre,” Spiegel On Line, September 4, 2009

Copyright owned by Michael Streich. 

The Author with Student, Barrett, on Charles Bridge Long after war ended