Reported by: Franz Mauder Report of August 26, 1950

In March 1945, as the German Wehrmacht retreated, the Waffen-SS burned the town of Javoricka. The Czech partisans who followed on the Wehrmacht's heels herded the German inhabitants of the area together and penned them into the forester's lodge and Castle Busau, where they were murdered. The children were driven into the cellars of the rental houses there, and shot in those rooms. The murderers then dumped the jam that was being stored there, over the corpses of the children.

In the German linguistic enclaves of Wachtel and Brodek the German inhabitants were herded into the malt factory of Littau, which had been converted into an internment camp, where they were subjected to dreadful brutalities.

Everyone who was taken there first received the so-called baptism. They were beaten on their bare upper body and feet until they passed out. After they came to again, the victims were compelled to do forced labor, regardless of the injuries they had suffered.

Every morning at 6 o'clock, 36 Germans had to stand in the factory square, facing the wall, and then these people were beaten until they were bloody. Among these victims was the old former Austrian first lieutenant Fiedler, who was in so much pain that he lost control over his bowels. With incredibly brutal maltreatment, the Czech Commandants Vycidal and Nakladal forced the German prisoner standing next to Fiedler to eat the excrement, and made sure that he took big mouthfuls. Among the victims, of which I was one, it was common to be spat at, or that the Czech guards would spit on the ground before us. We Germans would then have to lick the spit off the ground. Every night the partisans demanded women and girls from the Women's Section, and the Czech constable Grulich would select and deliver them. These victims had to stay two or three days, some of them as long as eight days, and were raped up to fifteen times per night by these hordes. The majority of these women were later diagnosed with venereal diseases.

 

Lyssa
(near Prag)

 

Reported by: Hermine Henkel Report of October 6, 1946

On October 16 of last year, my sister and I were taken from our home by the Commissar and a gendarme in order to do forced labor in the Czech region, for allegedly 4 to 6 weeks. We had to leave the house within 15 minutes and were allowed to take only the barest necessities. I begged the Commissar to leave us at home, as we had enough work at home with the cultivation of our 4,000 square meter garden, and also went out to work. At that, both of us - aged 57 and 60 years - were badly maltreated by the Czechs. They punched us in the face and kicked us in the abdomen. I sustained internal injuries from this abuse. For months my right side was swollen, and I threw up blood. After beating us they dragged us from the house by our hair, and herded us to the train station. Soon thereafter, a gendarme totally looted our house. For nine months we had to work in a tree nursery in Lyssa, near Prag, and we were constantly threatened with pistols and whips.

 

Mährisch Rothwasser
[Moravian Rothwasser]

 

Reported by: Oskar Minarsch Report of October 13, 1946

On May 19, I and many of my comrades were herded together in Moravian Rothwasser, and taken to the barracks for punishment. I simply cannot describe how the Czech partisans carried on here. Several of my comrades were beaten to death. Where I myself am concerned, I was punched in the face many times, and forced to eat part of a portrait of Hitler. But on my arraignment the Výbor (chairman Kopa) released me as being innocent. Ever since then I have lived in constant fear of more persecution. My entire house was looted, so that my family was left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I had to beg for the barest necessities.

On August 21, 1945 I was taken from field work to the concentration camp in Moravian Schildberg. From there, I was sent to the camp in Hohenstadt (the Old Castle). After a three-days' stay there, I and several of my comrades were sent to the penal institution in Mürau. In late September I was assigned to the paper factory of Lukawetz for hard labor. I had to work here until January 6, 1946, for very poor rations. I was not beaten here. From January 6 until mid-April I was in the concentration camp Heilendorf, near Hohenstadt. There was little work to be done there, but in return the rations were also very poor, especially at first. I was not beaten here, as I had not belonged to any NS organization. After that I was in the labor camp of Hohenstadt until early May. Discipline was very strict here. One time, when I had smoked without permission, I was beaten so badly that I collapsed. I was not personally maltreated any more beyond that. But I did contract severe rheumatism in my shoulder joints, and I suffer from it to this day. On July 4, 1946 my family and I were resettled [expelled].

 

Mährisch Trübau
[Moravian Trübau]

 

Reported by: Franz Wolf Report of June 14, 1946

I was arrested in October 1945 and sent to the internment camp of Moravian Trübau. On my arrest I was boxed about the head. After three days I was released on my employer's request.

On February 2, 1946 I was again arrested, and again sent to the internment camp of Moravian Trübau. I and the other inmates were badly maltreated in this camp. At various times throughout the night, drunken gendarmes came and made us line up in front of our pallets, and interrogated us as to what NS organization we had belonged to. With every question they would punch us in the head, the face and all over our body, so that soon we were all disfigured. Everyone who was bleeding or bruised was then locked into the cellar so that no-one would see it. In his despair at this maltreatment, my comrade Knorre from Kunzendorf hung himself in the washroom. Many of my comrades lost their hearing. I had to spend 3 months in this camp in Moravian Trübau. These beatings extended over period of about 8 weeks. Then (in early April), after an interned Czech also hanged himself in despair, the abuse stopped. In early May I was transferred to the labor camp in Moravan Trübau, where conditions were better.

Rations in the internment camp were totally inadequate. Per day we only got one bowl of watery soup and two thin slices of bread. In early June I was transferred to the resettlement [expulsion] camp.

 

Malschin
(near Kaplitz)

 

Reported by: Johann Hutter Report of November 2, 1946

Between the 12th and 18th [of August] this year the presbytery of Malschin was broken into and a large sum of money, 18,230 Czech crowns, was stolen. Being an anti-Fascist, I was permitted to frequent the public inn, where on August 14 I met the Czech Commissar Hoschek who came running in great excitement from the presbytery over to the inn and sat down beside me. When I asked him why he was so excited he declared that he had made a good catch in the presbytery. Four hundred-crown-bills fell out of his pants pockets, which were stuffed full of money, as were both his jacket pockets. Next Sunday in church I found out about the break-in from the curate's public announcement, and I told him that I probably knew who had done it, and told him of my encounter with the Commissar. He said that he had already suspected that the Commissar was the thief, since nobody else had access to the presbytery, but that it couldn't be proved and therefore nothing could be done. He would have preferred if I hadn't said anything about it. I did not try to do anything about it myself, as I know that a German's report is worthless and that the gendarmerie and the Commissar are in cahoots. The Commissar knew that I knew all about the incident, and was repeatedly heard to declare that the only one he was afraid of was Hutter. In early October he confiscated my anti-Fascist ID card, with the comment that the Kaplitz office had demanded it. But he did not give me a receipt for it when I asked for one.

 

Maschau
(District Podersam)

 

Reported by: Rosa König Report of June 10, 194[6]

In 1945 alone four members of my family lost their lives to the Czechs. In June 1945 [my husband's?] parents, Bruno König, retired senior audit counselor, born in 1865 and resident in Jauernig in the eastern Sudetenland, and his wife Emma König, born in 1867, were evicted from their home without any of their possessions at all and herded all the way to Chemnitz in Saxony, where they both died within 8 days of each other and were buried in a mass grave. A sister, Anna Fieber, born in 1887, was taken from her home in Kaaden/Eger by partisans in June 1945 and was dead by the very next day. [My?] brother Anton Totzauer, born in 1896, a farmer in Webeschau near Teplitz-Schönau, was tortured to death in May 1945 and dumped into a shallow grave on a depot site.

As for ourselves, within half an hour on June 29, 1945 we were totally looted and evicted from our home in Maschau, Podersam District, and driven out along with other townspeople (including the Dean and a paralyzed woman), treated like criminals, and herded together in barns until our entire wretched group was expelled across the border, under military escort.

 

Meierhöfen
(near Karlsbad)

 

Reported by: Hans Feigl Report of August 29, 1946

As internee of the concentration camp Neurohlau I was posted to the resettlement [expulsion] camp Meierhöfen, near Karlsbad, from January 25 until August 20, 1946 and during this time I attended all of the luggage inspections that took place there for resettlement transports. The inspectors were usually drunk, and carried out their inspections in an entirely arbitrary, rough and brutal manner. They distributed the expellees' better-quality possessions amongst themselves. They took any valuable linen and clothing from the expellees, even if the latter had not even attained the luggage weight that was officially permitted. With rough treatment the expellees were so intimidated that they usually did not dare object, and if the occasional one did protest to the camp commandant he usually did nothing about it. Several young inspectors targeted especially older people standing off to the side, inspected their luggage and usually looted it. Also, the inspections were carried out so roughly that many things were damaged. Watches, even if they were not gold, were without exception taken from their rightful owners. No assistance was given to the expellees in loading their luggage onto the vehicles for transport [expulsion], so that old people and women with children had to stow away their own baggage.

 

Melnik

 

Reported by: Elfriede Mattausch Report of June 7, 1946

To this day more than 5,000 Germans from District Melnik are still being detained as agricultural laborers, as "German post-war prisoners". Work times are usually 16 hours a day, including Sundays. The Germans have to see to their own rations with their food stamp cards, that provide for only 290 g [9¼ oz.] fat [per month] and no meat at all. Only in summer were they given an additional 560 g [18 oz.] meat per month. Most farmers do not pay at all for the work they receive. The Germans lived in wretched holes, in old shacks, without water, light, toilet or anywhere to cook. The treatment they received was inhuman. Obscene curses and horrible threats serve to destroy the people psychologically. The children are neglected since their mothers are left no time to take care of them. There was no medical care in cases of illness. There was a public health service, but thanks to the inhumane treatment the Germans were so intimidated that no-one dared go to see a doctor, as the farmers for whom they must work threaten to send anyone who falls ill to a concentration camp. In the neighboring town of Straschnitz, one farmer beat all the Germans, even women and girls, with his riding crop because they had not reported for work exactly at 6 o'clock in the morning.

I myself lived under these conditions for ten months in Simorsch, District Melnik on the Elbe. The circumstance that my father was put on a resettlement [expulsion] transport in Asch is what I have to thank for the fact that I and my two little children, my mother and sister got away from there at all.

My family and I had to spend five days in the resettlement camp. The rations were unfit for human consumption. 500 people were quartered in one room and there was no place for the children to sleep.

During luggage inspection the inspectors simply took anything and everything they liked, and kept it for themselves.

Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
Survivors speak out