-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.praguepost.com/20213news5.html
}}}>Begin
Austria's Sudeten Germans prepare fight
Survivors of postwar expulsion demand money, apology
By Kate Swoger
STAFF WRITER
Peter Wassertheurer knows the odds don't favor him.
Only 160,000 Sudeten Germans remain in Austria -- a fraction of the
2.5 million Germans expelled from postwar Czechoslovakia. The Czech
government categorically refuses to make apologies for the Germans'
removal from their land without compensation.
Despite this, Wassertheurer, a 38-year-old Viennese historian and
spokesman for the Austrian Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft (SDL), is
convinced his group will get the apology and compensation from the
Czech government they have demanded.
"We are few, but we are strong," he said.
The mass expulsion of Germans was ordered in 1945 under the Benes Decrees, named for
Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes, who issued them before the installation of a
provisional national government later that year.
As Czechoslovak officials seized their land and property, most Sudetens crossed into
Germany, but thousands died in concentration camps during the deportation.
The 57-year-old decrees have never been repealed or annulled by the Czech government
-- which infuriates many Austrians and Germans. On Feb. 8, the U.N. Commission for
Human Rights called on the Czech government to repeal
the decrees.
THE BENES DECREES
What: Postwar legislative decrees issued by Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes until
the Provisional National Assembly took power in late 1945
Controversy: Some 2.5 million Germans were stripped of their Czech citizenship and
expelled. Their property was seized without compensation.
Now: Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel has called on Prague to declare "once and
forever that the Benes Decrees are no longer effective, that they represent a dead
wrong." The Czech government has refused.
In recent weeks, the issue has prompted political debates and demands from Austria.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, pressed by the Freedom Party (FPO), his
populist coalition partner, recently called on Prague to sign a joint declaration
stating "once and forever that the Benes Decrees are no long
er effective, that they represent a dead wrong."
The FPO, once headed by nationalist JOrg Haider, wants Czech entry into the European
Union to be made conditional on the repeal of the laws. All 15 current EU states must
approve new members.
Prague has responded with the equivalent of a shrug.
Although he antagonized Germans and Austrians in January by labeling Sudeten Germans
"Hitler's fifth column" -- a reference to collaborators -- Prime Minister Milos Zeman
has refused to discuss repealing the decrees.
It isn't "necessary or even possible," he said Feb. 4. He added that the dispute was
settled in a 1997 bilateral agreement with Germany, when the two sides agreed to set
aside lingering war-era grievances.
Czech resistance to repealing the Benes Decrees is misunderstood, according to
government spokesman Libor Roucek.
"You have to see it in the psychological, political and legal context of the Second
World War," said Roucek, who lived in Austria for several years after emigrating in
1977.
Czechoslovakia wasn't the only nation to retaliate against its local German
population, many of whom had welcomed Hitler's occupation, he pointed out. Hungary and
Poland did, too. The expulsions were part of an effort to
create a new order in Europe, approved by the Allied nations at the Potsdam conference
in 1945.
Besides, any unresolved issues were handled years ago, in 1965 and 1974 agreements
with Austria, he added.
Roucek blamed populist politicians in that country for reviving the issue to score
political points. "Why [bring it up] 57 years after the Second World War?" he asked.
The SDL's Wassertheurer turned the question around: "Why can't we talk about all of
this now?"
"We are few, but we are strong."
-- Peter Wassertheurer,
spokesman for Sudeten Germans
Wassertheurer said the property and homes seized from the 2.5 million expellees are
worth trillions of crowns.
The group has begun organizing its complaints into a class action suit.
Wassertheurer's step-grandfather was driven out of postwar Slovenia under laws similar
to the Benes decrees. He said the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans represents an
outstanding breach of human rights that must be right
ed before the aging survivors die.
Austrian SDL Chairman Ger-hard Zeihsel struck an angrier note at a recent press
conference in Vienna; he called the expulsions "ethnic cleansing and genocide."
The SDL has also called on Austria to veto the Czech Republic's entry into the
European Union if Prague continues to stonewall on the question. But Brussels has
refused to make the Benes Decrees part of its negotiations f
or Czech entry, expected by 2004.
Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka thinks Czechs don't want
to reopen old wounds. It was easy for Czechs and Slovaks to put all
the blame on the Germans, he said.
And it was a way "to avoid the question of the lack of strength of
the Czech and Slovak resistance" to Hitler, he added.
Pelinka said Prague should recognize that the decrees violated human
rights because they were based on ethnicity, not individual
responsibility for wrongs done during the war.
But Wassertheurer said he understood that such a concession is
unlikely to happen without stronger political will in Austria and
Brussels. "In the end," he conceded, "we can only try to talk about
moral responsibility."
Kate Swoger's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have
been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
End<{{{
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