Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (24 page)

If such figures of authority were content to heap invective upon all Germans, they were also quick to pardon their own people for the vengeance they had taken. On the first anniversary of the end of the war a law was drawn up that excused all acts of ‘just reprisal’ against the Nazi authorities or their ‘accomplices’, even if such acts would normally be considered a crime. Significantly, this amnesty applied not only to reprisals carried out during the war, but also to those committed between 9 May and 28 October 1945.
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It is difficult to say just how many Germans died in Czechoslovakia as a result of the chaotic events in the aftermath of the war, but the figure is certainly in the tens of thousands. The subject is still so controversial, and provokes such strong emotions on both sides, that all statistics relating to the number of deaths are contested. German sources name 18,889 people who died before and during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia, 5,596 of them violently – but these figures do not take into account those whose deaths went unrecorded.
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Sudeten Germans often claim that the true figure is more like 250,000, but this is almost certainly a wild exaggeration.
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Conversely, some Czech historians claim that any violence in the aftermath of the war is a mere fiction created by Germans who still want to claim compensation today.
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The most reliable and impartial estimates have been compiled by the Czech historian Tomáš Stan
k, who cautiously suggests that between 24,000 and 40,000 Germans died as a direct result of their treatment during the postwar chaos in Czechoslovakia.
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Even this figure does not take into account those who died prematurely in the following years because their health was wrecked by what they had been through.

Stan
k also gives figures for the numbers of Germans imprisoned in the aftermath of the war. Even before the wholesale internment began in the run-up to the official expulsions, Czech records list 96,356 German prisoners – although Stan
k argues that the real figure is at least 20,000 higher. In fact, in mid-August 1945, more than 90 per cent of
all
the prisoners held in Bohemia and Moravia were of German nationality. This was ostensibly because they were supposed to represent a threat, and yet perhaps as many as 10,000 of them were children under fourteen.
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There is no doubt that some of these prisoners were guilty of the crimes that they were collectively blamed for. But the main reason they were kept in camps for so long after the war – and we must remember that many were not released until 1948 – was that they were a useful supply of free labour, particularly in the important agricultural and mining industries.

In principle, this use of conscripted German labour was not markedly different from what was going on in the rest of Europe, including Great Britain, where 110,000 German prisoners of war were still working at the beginning of 1948.
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Indeed, the use of forced German labour was endorsed by the international agreements between the Big Three at Yalta and Potsdam. But whereas in Britain only military prisoners were used as forced labour, most of those conscripted in Czechoslovakia were civilians. There was also a huge difference in the way such labourers were treated. In Britain, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, German labourers were fed the same as British workers, and subject to the same safety rules. In the Czech lands, where the Red Cross were often not even allowed access, many prisoners were fed less than 1,000 calories a day – under half what is necessary in order to maintain health – and were forced to do all kinds of dangerous work, including clearing minefields.
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Forced labourers in Czechoslovakia were also routinely humiliated in ways that deliberately emulated the Nazi treatment of Jews. Thus they were made to wear swastikas, white armbands, or patches of material painted with the letter ‘N’ (for N
mec, meaning German).
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When taken outside the internment camps on work duties they were frequently forbidden from using public transport, entering shops or public parks, or even walking on the pavement.
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The spectre of Nazism was often invoked during beatings and other ‘punishments’, particularly when the camp guards had themselves been victims of Nazi cruelty. For example, one German civil servant remembers his tormentor shouting, ‘I have got you at last, you sons of bitches! Four long years you tortured me in the concentration camp, now it is your turn!’
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CITIZENS OF VINOHRADY!

The praesidium of the Local National Committee for Prague XII has decided to solve the questions of Germans, Hungarians and traitors as follows:

1.
The term ‘German’ in all its inflections will hitherto be written only with small letters, likewise the term ‘Hungarian’.

2.
To Germans, Hungarians and traitors apply in future these provisions –

a.
all persons from fourteen years of age who come under the category German, Hungarian, traitor or collaborator will wear on the left side visibly on white canvas, size 10×10cm, a Swastika together with the number under which they will be registered. No person marked with the Swastika will receive normal ration cards. The same applies to persons who entered ‘D’ in column 6 (nationality) of their Registrations Certificate;

b.
no person marked with the Swastika is allowed to use tramway cars except when they go direct to work, at which time they must do so in the trailer; seats must not be used by these persons;

c.
no person marked with the Swastika is allowed to use the pavement – they may move only on the roadway;

d.
no person marked with the Swastika is allowed to buy, subscribe to, or read daily or other newspapers; this applies also to subtenants, if any, of such persons;

e.
no person marked with the Swastika is allowed to stay in, or proceed through, public gardens or parks, or woods, they are not allowed to call at or use barbers’ shops, restaurants, places of amusement of any kind, especially theatres, cinemas, lectures etc; likewise they are not allowed to use laundries, cleaners’ shops and rolling-presses. Shopping time for these persons is exclusively between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., and between 3 and 4 p.m. For disregarding the times so defined both buyer and seller will be liable to the same punishment. For dealings with authorities the time between 7.30 and 8.30 is exclusively fixed for these persons in all offices;

f.
no person marked with the Swastika is allowed to be away from his or her home after 8 p.m.;

g.
all persons over 14 years of age with the entry ‘D’ in their Registration Certificate report at once, at the latest within two days, to the Control and Report Commission of the L.N.C. for Prague XII for the issue of their badges and for registration. Those who fail to report in the set time, and who are found without the proper badge as prescribed, will be severely punished in the way the Nazi authorities adopted in similar cases. The same punishment will also be meted out to those who abet these persons in any way or associate with them for any purpose whatsoever;

h.
all persons with the entry ‘D’ in their certificates must appear without delay before the said Investigation Commission irrespective of whether they have perhaps received a provisional certificate concerning freedom of movement, etc. At the same time they [must] submit a proper list of all their property and hand it over, together with all valuables, to the Trustee of National Property of the N. C. XII, likewise also savings books and bank or other deposits, if any; they must report whether and in what way they have any capital interests, submitting proper evidence; further, they surrender at the same time all wireless sets together with their licences. Any financial transactions are forbidden and void; the Germans are not entitled to tobacco supplies, and they are not allowed to smoke in public or while working.

Citizens, workers and toiling people! We will, in accordance with the principles of our Government, carry out a proper purge and establish order at least in our district. Therefore help us, you too, to make Vinohrady national and ours as soon as possible.

These measures are only temporary, pending the deportation of all these people.

Given in Prague, 15 June 1945
Local National Committee for Prague XII
Oldrich Hlas, Chairman

Translation of a poster displayed in a district of Prague, June 1945
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According to Hans Guenther Adler, a Jew who had been imprisoned in Theresienstadt, there was very little difference between his own treatment and the treatment of Germans when they were imprisoned in that very same camp after the war:

Many amongst them had undoubtedly become guilty during the years of occupation, but in the majority they were children and juveniles, who had been locked up merely because they were Germans. Merely because they were Germans … ? This sentence sounds frighteningly familiar; only the word ‘Jews’ had been changed to ‘Germans’. The rags the Germans had been clothed with were smeared with swastikas. The people were abominably fed and maltreated, and they were no better off than one was used to from German concentration camps. The only difference was that the heartless revenge at work here was not based on the large-scale system of extermination carried out by the SS.
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