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| Europe |
| Schroeder says Czechs,Germans must put past behind |
| 2003-09-05 |
| German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Friday an age old dispute with the neighbouring Czech Republic, which is to join the European Union next May, should be laid to rest. Tensions have simmered for nearly 60 years since Prague’s expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans after World War II. Uh oh, here we go again. ’’The Czech Republic and Germany have every reason to look forward and what sometimes led to misunderstandings or differences of opinions should be relegated to the past,’’ Schroeder told journalists during a one-day visit to Prague. Misunderstandings? After World War II, three million Sudeten Germans were stripped of property and citizenship because most had supported Nazi Germany when Berlin annexed the borderlands in 1938 and the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Gee, and they were suprised the Czech’s held that against them? The row was left to fester during four decades of Communism. Growing nationalism in European politics last year resurrected the battle over the so-called Benes decrees which authorised the expulsion. The EU has ruled the decrees are not a barrier to the Czech Republic joining the bloc. What a suprise, guess the rest of europe hasn’t "gotten over it" either. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #5 The Germans want the decrees to be "revoked" or "nullified" (ex tunc - from the start), to state their illegimity (but without indemnification as a consequence, they just want a symbolic act), the Czechs said the decrees were legitimate then but that they had "expired" and would "no longer be upheld". The Czech ambassador Frantisek Cerny said 1998 in Berlin that the basis of three of the decrees (dealing with the expulsion and expropriation of Sudeten Germans) were based on an assumed "collective guilt" of all Germans in Czechoslovakia and had automatically "expired" (ex nunc - from now on) as being against human rights, when the Czech Republic signed the EU Human Rights Convention. Their full validity had been confirmed by the Czech Constitutional Court in 1995 (no further ruling in the light of the "new situation" created in 1998). The Czechs have refused any dialogue about the decrees. It is believed that Czech camps for Germans (Aussig and Brno), forced labor, hunger and diseases as a consequence of inhumane treatment led to the death of 240000 Germans. 3,5 millions of Germans and about 100000 Hungarians were expelled. The Czechs also justified the expropriation saying that the money and property would be use to indemnify the Czech victims of National Socialism. This obviously did not happen in many cases. Most Czech Jews who were expropriated by the Nazi did not get their property back from the Czech State. Most of these "aryfied" properties are still in the hands of the state, not in those of the victims. Also Sudeten Germans, who actively fought against the Nazi regime, suffered the same fate, they were expropriated and expelled along with the Germans who supported German annexation in 1938. Btw Hungarians pretty much suffered the same fate as the Germans. Interestingly enough quite a few German Jews living in CZ and killed in the Nazi death camps were expropriated post mortem as "Germans". Germany (and the EU) don't accept the Czech idea that the decrees are no longer valid as long as the Czech Constitutional Court doesn't declare them so. Which seems to be accurate because the decrees are still applied (in heritage disputes for example or in disputes about the non legal application of the decrees) |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2003-9-6 4:09:08 AM |
| #4 >>recent differences of opinions about the expulsion of Germans which the Czechs consider perfectly legitimate.<< What are they>? |
| Posted by: g wiz 2003-9-6 3:04:50 AM |
| #3 No need for a right to return. In the EU everybody can freely settle where he or she likes. The "misunderstandings or differences" do not refer to the war atrocities but to rather recent differences of opinions about the expulsion of Germans which the Czechs consider perfectly legitimate. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2003-9-5 10:44:07 PM |
| #2 "Clearly they need to demand a "right of return"." Except that we call it "Shengen". ;-) |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2003-9-5 9:21:08 PM |
| #1 Clearly they need to demand a "right of return". |
| Posted by: someone 2003-9-5 7:22:57 PM |