Translated and commentated by Rodney Atkinson
Berlin’s foreign policy continues to target the end of the so called “Benes Decrees”(the post second world war dispossession of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia who had been so supportive of the murderous Nazi regime in Prague during the war). On 20th June (note AFTER the Czech Referendum on EU entry) the German Parliament strengthened its demand of the Czech republic “to repeal the continuing laws and decrees from the years 1945 and 1946”. The day before the German Chancellor had declared that “ethnic cleansing as such is always wrong” (strange that the German government, itself responsible for so much ethnic cleansing by its ally Croatia does not demand similar repatriation of 1 million Serbs to their homes!). On its website (!) the German Government continues to assert that “Restitution and Property questions have not been conclusively settled” with Prague.
The demand of the German Upper House that the Czechs should repeal all “expulsion decrees” followed a declaration of the Czech Government referred in connection with the removal of Germans after the war to “from today’s perspective unacceptable events and deeds” (in fact from today’s EU perspective, post Yugoslavia, apparently VERY acceptable!).
Prague regards this formulation as final and no legal claims by German refugees can arise. The German Government insists on calling the expulsion “illegal” so as to build on that formulation restitution and compensation claims.
“Important information for Czech Voters”
The Prague Foreign Office expressed “surprise” at the demand to remove the Benes Decrees. Czech President Vaclav Klaus recalled that the repeated German demand for the annulment of the decrees was on contravention of the German Czech Declaration of 1997 in which Germany committed itself “not to burden the Czech Republic with political and legal questions raked up from the past”. “It would have been important information for Czech voters” said President Klaus had the German Upper House put its demands BEFORE the Czech referendum on EU entry.
“Compensation”
The Deputy Czech President Petr Mares has meanwhile suggested the payment of “compensation” to the circa 50,000 German speaking minority in the Czech Republic. The Chairman of the Sudeten German Association Bernd Posselt (an MEP, whose organisation was for years run by those who had been prominent in the evil Nazi wartime regime in Prague and whose demands have become ever more shrill) demanded the “swift realisation” of this plan and in addition demanded the establishment of a “Round Table” between representatives of the Czech Republic and the Sudeten Germans. Some two weeks previously the President of the European Parliament Pat Cox had offered his services as an intermediary for such meetings.
