Sudeten German Inferno The hushed

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.

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 already-crazed 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.

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 hate-filled 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"!

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.

In the time of the witch-hunts, 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 exposés titled "Schreie aus der Hölle ungehört" - 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.

(1) Alois Bernt, Die Germanen und Slawen in Böhmen und Mähren. Spuren früher Geschichte im Herzland Europas, Tübingen: Grabert, 1989, pp. 15-16, 21; Emil Franzel, Sudetendeutsche Geschichte, Augsburg: Bechtermünz, 1997, p. 16; Armin E. Hepp, Völker und Stämme in Deutschland. Von der Steinzeit zum Mittelalter, Tübingen: 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 Völker. Sprachliche Widerlegung der These von den "slawischen Völkern", Frankfurt/M.: R. G. Fischer, 1995, p. 9, 12; Hans Riehl, Die Völkerwanderung. Der längste 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 für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1978, p. 179. ...back...

(4) Fritz Peter Habel, Eine politische Legende, Munich: Langen Müller, 1996, p. 118.

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 head-down 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 fellow-sufferers. 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.

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."

"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.

The tragedy of the Sudeten Germans began 60 years ago, with the collapse of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Millions of people were imbued with the desire for self-determination, 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 self-determination 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.

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 Stöckl, laborer                      23      Kaaden
Ferdinand Kumpe, day laborer               15      Kaaden
Hugo Nittner, electrician                  18      Kaaden
Marie Loos, housewife                     54      Kaaden
Kath. Tschammerhöhl, 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 Stöck, 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 Länger, 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, Brüx, Moravian Trübau, Kaplitz, Znaim, Pressburg, Freudenthal, Arnau, Oblas near Znaim, Pilsen, Pohrlitz in South Moravia, Leitmeritz, Iglau, Zuckmantel, Asch, Aussig and Graslitz.

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:

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 three-and-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 far-reaching 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.

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: DSZ-Verlag, 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 Czech-Slovak 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 Social-Democratic 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 self-determination. 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.

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.)

(1)Diplomat in the Foreign Office since 1928; 1936, First Diplomatic Secretary to Ribbentrop in London; 1938-1941, 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, Brünn and other cities with a sizable German minority greeted their fellow-countrymen with cheers of joy. The next day, on March 16, 1939, the "Decree Regarding the Bohemian-Moravian 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:

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.

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 Führer.

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 well-known 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):

"On September 22, 1941, SS-Obergruppenführer 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 pro-Czech - 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."

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 Ravensbrück 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:

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 self-administration 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.

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-in-exile 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 fellow-countryman 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-in-exile. 241,000 Sudeten German and 250,000 German prisoners of war fell victim of the Czechs' enormous post-War 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."

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 Brügel, 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 Brüx, 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 fellow-sufferers 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 'Gebirgshöhe' they stood him up against a wall and murdered him from behind."

In 1945 the Sudeten German Social Democrat Wilhelm Niesser sent the following memorandum to the Prague government (quoted from Brügel, 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 anti-Fascist 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.

"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.

"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."

"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, Kästler, and others whom I did not know. As late as May 1945, Krautschneider, Kaliwoda, Müller 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. 70-year-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 Gemüter_ 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.

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, blood-bespattered 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!

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 late-medieval Czech knight's descendants in the death march of Brünn 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 Brünn 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 Brünn and tortured to the point of death.

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 Brünn) 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 Brünn (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 Brünn" 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.

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!

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, beaten-up 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 Brünn, 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 stone-drunk, 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, 1942-1943, 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 Brünn, married in Brünn, lived in Brünn, and thus my odyssey of suffering had also begun in Brünn.

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 Schröfel, innkeeper, hanged himself. His wife took poison when his estate was plundered during the occupation.

Jablonetz: September 8, 1945: Schimmer, died following abuse in Karthaus-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, n‚e 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.

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 Kröhn, 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;