WITNESS TO HISTORY
Michael Walsh
CHAPTER 18
A CHRISTIAN NATION CRUCIFIED
The Sudetenland is a territory about 180 miles long; the size of Belgium with a population similar to that of Norway or Ireland. German for 700 years and lying on the rich borderlands between Germany, Austria and what is now Czechoslovakia.
Under the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty, the Sudeten Germans and their lands were forced to become part of the newly-created Czechoslovakian state. At Munich, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain corrected this injustice, which has since been described as 'The Munich sell-out' by those who had wanted to make the 'Sudeten problem' a cause for war.
"The worst offence (of the Versailles Treaty) was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule." - H.N. Brailsford, Leading left-wing Writer
"The Munich Pact was a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life." - Professor A.J.P Taylor
Throughout the Second World War,
"The Czechs proved themselves the most loyal collaborators of Hitler's Germany. The Germans did not even consider it necessary to undertake a sifting of Czech officials. The whole Czech economy worked for the war without friction." - Verbrechen am Deutsch Volk Dokumente Allierter Grasamkeiten 1939 - 1949, Verlag K.W Scheutz, Goettingen, 1964, p.245
The Protectorate was so benign and prosperous during the war years that its economy actually improved, and the greatest problem faced by the Germans was Czech immigration - to Germany. This left harvesting and local industry short of the manpower needed. There was only one notable terrorist incident, when in flagrant disregard for international law (which Britain was signatory to), the British Government parachuted Communist terrorists in to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich.
This act resulted in a reprisal which whilst technically legal was inexcusable and which in the event provided Britain with an 'atrocity bonus', when the village of Lidice, which had harbored the terrorists, was evacuated of women and children and the men being executed by firing squad.
To keep things in perspective it is well to remind oneself that Lidice would never have happened had the British Government kept faith with international law. The village was deliberately set up and those involved in the affair were well aware of the likely consequences of their actions before undertaking them. It was common British policy at the time to parachute members of the Special Forces into occupied territory to assassinate members of the German Armed Forces. Evidence would be placed suggesting local guilt for the purpose of inviting reprisals that would lead to local armed resistance.
In context it might also be remembered that without any such provocation, the Czechs razed over 500 German villages from existence. :
"The official Czech register of names of villages reveals that nearly 500 (German) villages no longer appear on the register because they have literally disappeared from the landscape." - Verfall und Zerstoerung der Sudetendeutschen, Munich, 1965
This alludes to the period following the war when ethnic cleansing - accompanied by unimaginable brutality, all too commonplace as the victorious allies swept over Europe, resulted in the forced expulsion of 3,000,000 Sudeten-Germans of whom 241,000 were murdered in the most appalling circumstances.
The war's end on May, 5th, 1945, signalled the liquidation of the Monrovian-Bohemian nation of Sudetenland. Urged on by expatriate leaders, to a man (and woman) Communist or sympathetic to that creed, the bloodbath began.
WHILE THE ALLIES LOOKED THE OTHER WAY
"Kill the Germans, wherever you find them! Every German is our mortal enemy. Have no mercy on women, children, or the aged. Kill every German - wipe them out!" - Prague Radio. Communist 'Czech National Front'
"When Edward Benes, supported by the allies, entered Prague on Sunday, May, 13th, 1945, German citizens were burned alive in his honour at St. Wenceslas Square." - Document No.15
"Many Germans were hung up by their feet from the big advertising posters in St. Wenceslas Square, then when the great humanitarian approached their petrol-soaked bodies were set on fire to form living torches." - Louis Marschalko, Hungarian Playwright and Novelist
THE SIGNAL FOR THE BLOODBATH
"Some of the tactics and methods during these expulsions were; ordering whole villages on a notice of minutes to gather in the market place, be abused physically, driven on foot to a German border, or collected in camps - in all, 51 concentration camps; starved on 750 calories a day, at night the women were put at the disposal of the Red Army for raping.
"Other specialties of abuse were kicking on the shins and in the genitals; clubbing over the head with iron bars lead pipes; having the arrested face each other and forced to hit each other in the face - and all these abuses were given no reason except that the victims were Sudeten Germans.
"A favorite method of killing was throwing people into a lake or river. For example, tying a mother and child with ropes and so drowning them; as many as forty children at a time in a lake or river and keeping then under water with poles until they drowned." - Austin J. App, Ph.D, The Sudeten-German Tragedy, 1979
"Men, women and children were required on virtually no food to trek on foot to the German or Austrian border; those who stumbled and could not get up anymore were shot. Sometimes when a woman fell exhausted, lit matches were put to her soles.
"The expelled were in any case allowed to take only a few personal belongings and food. But even of this they were often plundered on the way." - Austin J. App, Ph.D, The Sudeten-German Tragedy, 1979
"The orgies of murder in Bohemia and Moravia defy one's imagination. In Czechoslovakia Soviet troops raped in long lines German women and girls in accord with their lusts and Stalin's recommendations. . . the Communistic revolutionaries, who called themselves partisans, organized a reign of terror, robbery and murder. . . and the Czech populace became a supporting mob." - Professor Hellmut Diwald, Geschicte der Deutschen, Propylaen, 1978
The accounts of the barbarism that accompanied the expulsions of Sudeten Germans is well documented, and are contained and supported by 40,000 documents held at Koblenz Archives. These include names, dates and figures. As Dr. A.J App points out, these expulsions (and 241,000 murders) unlike the six million 'gassed' Jews allegations, are all backed by judicially acceptable documentation.
THE EVIDENCE OF:Dr. Jur. Bruno S. Stadler, Christlich Sociale UNION, November, 1948
"One Professor Zelenk of the University of Prague delivered twenty women to a Czech mob saying; 'Here I bring the German sows.' The mob beat them with laths and rubber hoses and screamed, 'Kneel down, you German harlots.' They fell to their knees, and had their hair shorn off with bayonets.
"Some of the women who had not done nor were accused of any wrongdoing, their crime was being German, were clubbed to death. One of the women, Helene Burger, a mother, became unconscious when a kick broke two of her ribs. When she came too, her foot bled; someone had cut a four centimeter piece of flesh from her calf."
"Of the twenty women Helene Burger was tortured with, two committed suicide, two went insane. She survived and was moved to Camp Habigot where in four barracks 1,200 women were imprisoned.
"A Czech Red Cross nurse sorted out the pretty and young women, to whom at night the Russian militia were admitted. Some were raped as often as forty-eight times at night. Their cries of despair could be heard in the other barracks. In the morning these women lay about apathetic on the dirty floors with 'bitten off noses, and scratched up faces.'"
"Hot pitch was brushed on the bare backs of inmates before they were beat up. In Iglau, 1,200 Germans committed suicide; the rest, the old and the sick included, were whipped on to Tangen. 350 of them died on the way...."
From June to August 16 1946, Alfred Kritschner was in the camp at Maehrisch-Ostrau.
"In this camp he received daily, as every other inmate, 120 blows. Before his eyes six inmates were clubbed to death. And all the inmates ran about totally naked because all their clothes had been taken from them upon admission.
"One of the inmates told his friend, Ernest Schorz, while tears rolled down his cheeks, how he had to watch while his eight-month pregnant wife was abused. She had to stand naked against a wall, was beaten with clubs until the foetus was aborted, and she no longer breathed. Even then the sadists' 'tied his wife's hands and feet, pulled her up on the wall; then they cut off both her breasts."
"Tortures, clubbing to death, burning alive were the order of the day. Daily, men had to die. . . Mittelbach died without a cry. Dr. Schobert was clubbed to death before the eyes of his son, Dymastschek. Fotograf Schuster, the old shopkeeper Herr Braun, 75, Professor Ketner, 83, the policeman Hillert, Weber, Phillip D. Korner, headteacher Herr Kuehn, etc. 386 men I saw die in the most terrible way."
"Professor Groessk became insane with pain and was burned to death alive. Girschik, with only one leg, died before the open grave, totally naked, riddled with machine-gun fire."
"He saw how six Germans he knew, and others, were tortured to death. His nephew, Roland, was clubbed to death before his eyes. On June,9, he himself was to be hanged at the Turnplatz. After he had been beaten up, so he could not stand properly; 'After his testicles were swollen the size of a football', he was thrown in a truck and driven back to Komotau. On the truck Czechs pressed glowing cigarettes on his face and neck."
" ... that night, June,8, from three to four o'clock, 67 men were shot, including the husband of Frau Morthe along with her thirteen-year old son."
This evidence is proven, the victims identifiable and often the perpetrators brought to book. One, an Antonin Homolka, shot to death a German policeman, helped plunder a column of Silesian refugees, abusing and murdering Sudetens who tried to shield the victims. On that same day, May,9, 1945, he pulled a two-month old baby from its pram being pushed by its mother. Grabbing the infant by its feet and holding its head between his knees, he pulled it apart to its neck.
Homolka fled Czechoslovakia when the Communists took over in 1948, and was later arrested in Germany. He showed no remorse but said: 'we as yet clubbed to death a few Germans. Even now we should kill all the Germans.'"
The arrest taking place in the U.S. Zone of Occupation, the Americans reminded the German 'authorities' that they alone were war criminals and that the allies were not to be touched by the Germans. Homolka was released and taken away to safety." - Der Socialdemokrat, London, December 31st 1949
This case caused considerable bitterness in Germany, as did:
"On June 4 1945 he (Frantisek Kroupa, Mayor of Joachimsthal) ordered everybody on pain of death to be at the city hall at 4.00pm. There, two Germans were to put a rope around the neck of Max Steinfelsner, owner of a sawmill. The same day, Kroupa ordered Otto Patek into Camp Schlackenwerth.
"He and inmates already bloodied were locked in the dance hall, the inmates had to bare themselves to the hips, and then were clubbed with hoses, leather and steel whips until the flesh hung on their bodies and they fainted. This was done to them three times a day and three times at night. In other words, this again was pointless sadism, serving no purpose except torment and torture." - Erich Kern, Verbrechen am Deutscher Volk, p.270-2
"On the night of June 5 - 6, a dozen Czechs entered the dance hall, covered the windows with blankets, grabbed the watchmaker Mueller of Joachimsthal. They laid him on a bench with a blanket, with knife cut off his ears, stabbed his eyes out of his socket, drilled a bayonet into his throat, knocked out his teeth, crossing his arms and legs over the bench, broke his bones. Because he still lived, they tied barbed wire around his throat, and dragged him around the hall until the corpse was only a mass of flesh." - Erich Kern, Verbrechen am Deutscher Volk, 1964, 323p
THE EVIDENCE OF; Verbrechen am Deutscher Volk: Eine Dokumentation Allierter Grausamkeiten Verlag K.W Schuetz, Goettingen, 1964, 332p
ATTACKS ON LINES OF REFUGEES
"... stripped of their valuables, forced to stand outside all night, women and children included, then ordered to march towards the Austrian border. Those who after ten miles were too tired to continue, 'were assembled by female partisans, stripped naked... countless persons were beaten to death...."
"... a soldier was chasing a woman. He jumped over the exhausted woman on the ground and landed with both feet on the head of an eight-year old girl, killing her immediately."
"Night after night all the women, including the sick and even the very old ones of seventy years or more, were raped."
"Mass graves had to be established around Pohrlitz. Here, 4,000 ethnic murdered Germans found their final resting-place. In nearby Nikolsburg 400 were buried."
"I saw an S.S man hung with one foot on a lamp post, burning from the head up."
"Marianne Kraus, saw her husband, 66, beaten to death in the Police Station."
"... how he and thirty other boys between eleven and eighteen were sent to a camp at Olmutz, doing heavy unloading work at rail sidings, given only a small; slice of bread, thin soup and coffee, so that several boys died."
"The Czechs woke (the boys) at four every morning... totally irrational whipping seems to have been standard treatment."
"Martha Woelfel reports that her Camp Klaidovka was full of lice and bed bugs; the diet consisted of only bread and water, so that a hundred children died of hunger, including her own child."
"On July 30t, 1945 in Aussig (Usti), a town of 44,000 people, Germans leaving the fire of Schict were ambushed on the Elbe Bridge, mowed down with machine guns and were either shot or drowned in the Elbe River."
"A massacre followed. Women and children were thrown from the bridge into the river. Germans were shot down in the streets. It is estimated that 2,000 or 3,000 people were killed." - F.A Voigt, Berlin correspondent, Manchester Guardian, Nineteenth Century
EXCERPTS RECOUNTED IN 'LAST DAYS OF THE REICH'
"Groups of partisans started to shepherd our people towards the cross-roads and eventually we were all gathered in a jostling mass. Everybody had to go to the cross-roads, even the children and the sick. The German soldiers were marched away - eastwards, towards the Soviet Union and Siberia and that left only us civilians, defenseless and frightened.
"From somewhere close at hand there was a burst of firing and this seemed to be the signal for the Czechs to plunder our unguarded carts. Some of men started to run towards the carts intending to stop the looting, but the partisans shot them down as they ran. This caused our women to scream and cry. And that caused one particular partisan, a bald man of about forty years of age, to lose control. He had a dog lead in his hand and he rushed into the screaming women lashing at them and flogging them with the steel end of the lead. His action started the real terror as other partisans followed his example.
"What happened then is so terrible that I do not like to even think about it. Men who tried to protect their womenfolk were shot as they knelt or crouched over the bodies of the women. Then came the robbing of the women. Those with gold chains around their necks had them stolen. Wedding rings were taken. In fact, anything of value was torn off."
"We all had to stand in ranks (men separated from the women and children) and we had been standing there for some time when the partisans walked through our ranks and selected men at random and led them away behind some carts. There were shots heard and the Czechs came back and laughed at our fear.
"Then they picked out fresh victims. There were about twenty in number. This group was ordered to kneel down in front of the rest of us - about 50 yards in front of us.
"There was a clicking of bolts and then one of the partisans swung the barrel of his rifle along the line of kneeling men. He fired. One of the men fell forward. Another partisan stepped forward and traversed his rifle along the line on men now shaking with fear. There was another shot but this time nobody fell. The partisan had deliberately fired wide of his target. A third Czech pointed his rifle and pulled the trigger. There was no explosion. He roared with laughter. He had not loaded the gun. It was a huge joke. Then a fourth partisan fired and killed a man from my own village.
"So it went on. How long we stood there while they slowly selected their victims in that line and tormented them before murdering them I do not know. Eventually, all twenty or so were dead.
"If we moved while standing in line we were beaten with sticks or gun butts. Sometimes we were beaten for no reason at all. It was well past midday when a group of partisans rushed into the crowd of women and there was a lot of screaming. We could all guess what was happening. The Czechs were dragging out the young women to rape them.
"The older ones tried to form a circle so as to protect the girls, but against an enemy who is willing to kill you all the passive resistance in the world is no use. The girls were taken and then stripped. Then the rapes began. Not just by one man of one girl but the multiple rape of one girl by a whole group of men.
"There were also some of the rapists who had abnormal desires. When the attacks began we rushed forward to show the partisans that we were determined to protect our women. Bursts of machine-gun fire over our heads caused only a slight hesitation and as we ran on the Czechs opened fire with machine pistols and killed or wounded about forty of our group. We were flogged back with whips and clubs and some of the wounded were bayoneted." - Last Days of the Reich, James Lucas, Arms & Armour Press
EVIDENCE: DOKUMENTE ZUR VERTREIBUNG DER SUDETEN-DEUTSCHEN
Consists of 590 pages of mostly eyewitness-sworn affidavits of brutalities. The index lists two pages of references to hanging, three to burning alive, four to blinding, forty-two to murder, and forty three to rape. For 'clubbing to death' there are twenty-five pages of evidence.
Richard Knorre, in Prague when the atrocities began described how German Prisoners-of-War, supposedly under the protection of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, were hung by their feet to candelabra, had fire made under their heads, so to burn to death under unspeakable pain.
"... saw two brothers, Hauke, sixteen and eighteen years, were shot by Commander Katiorek. On the day before one of the boys had a swastika cut into his buttocks."
With other prisoners (Sebastian Herr) had to dig up buried S.S men, and re-bury them in mass graves. He reports:
"In the night the inmates were called into the courtyard, where each night ten men, women and children were counted off and shot. This happened to two of my brothers... once I got nothing to eat for ten days. The children were handed their meal in a spittoon. Children who rejected this, were beaten to death." - Hildegard Hurtinger, May, 15th, 1945
FRAU HURTINGER CONTINUED:
"Pregnant women were dragged from their cells by armed Czechs, taken to the courtyard, undressed and whipped, and then pushed into toilets and be-laboured with clubs and fists until the fetus aborted. On most days ten women in this way were done to death."
"Some days some six or eight of us were taken to St. Botthard's Church. Here we were forced to kiss the corpses which were already putrefying, pile them in a heap, and then lick the blood up from the floor of the church. A Czech mob watched us all the while and then whipped us."
On May, 20th, 1945, they saw with their own eyes,
"German boys and girls, and also German POWs, hung up by the feet to candelabra and trees, had petroleum poured on them, and set on fire." - Kern, op.cit. p.259
"Elsie Rotter describes how in Landeskron, June, 1945, fifty men were hung up and burned alive, and a hundred older men were thrown into a pool, and 'Hitler boys' were forced with poles to hold them under water until they drowned. Ernst Schorz helped to bury those who dies in Camp Palatzky. In three weeks it was about 200. Most of them were mutilated, arms and legs hacked off, including many corpses of women." - Kern, op.cit. p.265
Such then was the 'liberation' of Czechoslovakia; here accounted a microcosm of the murder and expulsion of 3 million men, women and children, from lands that they had toiled since the Middle Ages, lands that had stood as the bulwarks of Europe.
The tragedy did not end with the expulsions and murders, for the Czechs were to suffer themselves under Communist rule when in between 1948 and 1952, their new Bolshevik bosses sentenced 233 persons to death, and imprisoned a further 147,770 for 'political offences'.
The Communist Party prohibited 365 authors and writers the right to publish. 27,500,000 books were burned and 1.5 million informers let loose on Czech society.
A further 186,921 Czechs were held in forced labor camps, and 118,683 in military forced labor camps. The number of persons who in prisons, trials or during arrest lost their lives totaled 15,726.
The great irony is that Hitler had sacrificed so many troops to hold the front lines of Czechoslovakia against the Asiatic Communist hordes from which they were so soon to suffer grievously, and that when the Czechs themselves rebelled against their Communist dictators in 1968, the lucky ones escaped - to Germany!
Next -- Chapter 19 -- WHILE GOD'S BACK WAS TURNED