Retrieve
In his speech on "Sudeten Germans' Day", Bavarian Prime Minister, Stoiber, demanded a "round table" that would include the future Czech government, Bavarian representatives and those of the Sudeten German Homeland Association, with the objective of "healing" "past injustice" - the resettlement of the Germans.[1] For this, the resettled Germans - who had been banished because they had profited from and collaborated with the Nazi-occupation - must be "restored their full dignity as Bohemian citizens". "This means", declared Stoiber, "they must be retrieved back into the history and community of their homeland." This vague formulation leaves various options open, one being an earlier suggestion by Prague, that had been rejected by the German Government in 1992, because of domestic considerations: Prague had offered to grant Czech citizenship to the resettled Germans and their descendents (as a second to their German citizenship).[2]
Criminals
Alongside the vague demand for "homeland rights" for the Germans, banished in 1945[3], the Bavarian Prime Minister also demands the abrogation of the law guaranteeing amnesty (May 8, 1946). This law exempts from punishment, all actions of resistance against the Nazi occupation committed during the entire duration of the occupation, as well as during the time of feared Nazi-rebellions, following the occupation.[4] An abrogation of this law would criminalize all resistance fighters, who had broken Nazi laws while operating clandestinely, including those, who had killed Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi governor in Prague, on May 27, 1942.
Crimes
The abrogation of this amnesty law is considered necessary, because there were also criminal offences committed during the struggle against the German occupier. Similar situations in which acts of revenge were carried out against the hated occupier and his collaborators are known to have taken place in all occupied countries, including France and Italy. What German foreign policy was not able to accomplish in Western Europe, is being tried in Eastern Europe: By spotlighting individual cases of excess, they are attempting to characterize the entire resettlement activities as ethnically motivated crimes.[5]
Genocide
If they succeed, there would be no stopping of the legal qualification of resettlement as "genocide". As Bernd Posselt, the national chairman of the Sudeten German Homeland Association expressed it last weekend in Nuremberg, the "expulsion" was a "calculated and planned act, aimed at the establishment of an ethnically homogeneous national state".[6] According to Posselt, the "attempt to destroy an ethnic group by robbing it of its livelihood" should already be considered as genocide. "Banishment is Genocide" was the slogan of this year's "Sudeten Germans' Day". The fact that genocide cannot fall under the statute of limitations and can therefore be criminally pursued at any time is crucial to the revisionist politicians.
Advancement Opportunities
In their efforts to revise postwar history, the German revisionist federations bank on Germanophilic circles in the Czech Republic. Particularly the new elite generation is considered receptive to these efforts. In an opinion poll in the Czech Republic, only one third of those between 16 and 29 years old oppose a German inspired "Center against Banishment" - as opposed to approximately 60 percent of the people over 60. Comparable results were recorded in other Eastern European countries, showing the impact of these states' foreign policy reorientation in the years 1989 to 1991. Their subsequent co-operation with Germany, the new hegemonic power, opened numerous advancement opportunities, as they were dissociating themselves from their former elite of the defunct socialism and its eastern ties, reflecting the experience of German occupation.
Positive expectations
The resettled Germans are particularly banking on the Germanophilic circles in sectors of the former dissident movements. The Sudeten German Homeland Association's national chairman, Bernd Posselt, has "positive expectations" [7] particularly in relation to the Czech Greens, who polled approximately six per cent of the vote in last weekend's parliamentary elections. At its origins the Green Party were sympathizers of the former "Charter 77" opposition. Petr Uhl, the Greens chairman in Prague, had been one of the signers of the "Charter 77" founding document. In a common declaration signed by the Czech Greens and the German "Alliance 90/The Greens" Party in neighboring Bavaria, one reads: "The Czech Greens will strive to keep the memory alive of the loss resulting from liquidation and banishment."[8]
Free Europe
Uhl is not the only prominent representative of the 1970s and '80s opposition, who had adopted demands of the German revisionist federations. Pavel Tigrid, who had lived in exile, considers the resettlement to be one of the biggest ethnic cleansings in European history. On occasion, Tigrid had been the director of "Radio Free Europe" (RFE) and later, in Paris, published the Czechoslovakian exile magazine "Svedectvi". RFE was founded by the US secret services and for many years had its headquarters in Munich (Bavaria). RFE's first propaganda broadcast (1951) was already directed at listeners in the former CSSR. Since 1995, RFE has been broadcasting from Prague.
Together
The co-operation between Czech exiled politicians, German revisionists and subversive organizations, explains the success of the current attacks on the Czech Republic's sovereignty. These common interests can be found even among today's top politicians in Prague. For example, a former collaborator of the Pan European Union, which enjoys close ties to the federations of the "banished", announced that he had traveled "often since 1981 (...) to visit opposition intellectuals of Solidarnosc in Poland, Charter 77 in Bohemia" and had maintained "close contacts" to them.[9] Rudolf Kucera, one of the signatories of the "Charter 77" was one who profited from the eastern contacts of German "banished" circles and established in the 1980s, an underground branch of the Pan European Union in Prague. In 1991, Kucera became a member of the German-Czech historian commission - at a time, when former "Charter 77"-speaker, Vaclav Havel, proposed to offer "the Sudeten Germans" also the Czech citizenship, in addition to their German citizenship. Havel, who enjoys high esteem because of his former activities as a dissident, is considered a member of the inner circle of the Germanophilic elite. In the headquarters of "Radio Free Europe", he celebrated the 50. Anniversary of this CIA media creation - together with German guests.
