Reported by: Elisabeth Lomitschka Report of August 25, 1946

I owned a 13-hectare [32-acre] farm in Cwinomas, District Mies. On July 4, 1945 Czech partisans looted our estate, and on August 27 we were assigned a Czech administrator. On October 28, 1945, at 2 o'clock at night, I was abducted to Pribram District for agricultural labor, together with my 8-year-old son and my parents-in-law. In Pribram we were constantly being cursed and spat at by the Czech locals, and my son was often beaten. On July 17, 1946 we were transferred to the concentration camp of Dobris near Pribram. About 400 women and girls and 200 men were imprisoned there. The second day all women had to assemble in a loft. Then 10 uniformed and armed young Czech women came in and examined the vagina and uterus of every woman and girl for jewelry, as they said. They pushed down on the stomach with one hand, and inserted the other into the vagina and rooted around inside. They proceeded like that from one woman to the next without washing. Even 12-year-old girls were examined like that. Many women had pain afterwards. Mrs. Wenisch from Otrocin developed fever and such severe pain in her belly and lower back that she had to be sent to the hospital in Prosecnice. I too have had abdominal pain ever since then, and need medical care. I was just having my period at the time of that examination. On my brother-in-law's request I was then sent to the resettlement camp in Mies. I do not have nearly as much luggage as is officially allowed.

 

Dolawitz

 

Reported by: Karl Ullsperger Report of July 3, 1946

In the community office of Dolawitz we were relieved of a suitcase of clothing. Also, my wife was robbed of her horn-rimmed glasses, dish towels and all hand towels, her and our daughter's underwear, a pair of leather shoes and a pair of slippers. Of her seven dresses our daughter had to give up five, as well as two nightgowns. It was Anna Odlas, the wife of the administrator of my farm, who took these things from us. In conclusion Mrs. Odlas also punched my wife and daughter in the head and back. She even helped herself to the toothbrushes that my wife and daughter were using, as well as the soap and laundry detergent that had been bought with our last ration stamps.

 

Domeschau

 

Reported by: Johann Rösner Report of October 17, 1946

On November 16, 1945 my family and I were sent to the Czech regions to work, and were sent back home on August 15, 1946 to be resettled [expelled]. That same night 3 Czechs wearing civilian clothes - one of them also had a gun - dragged me out of my bed, took me to my former house which is currently under a Czech administrator, and there I was literally tortured. One of the 3 Czechs, Lenert Vojtek, punched me in the face until I bled. In the process he damaged my nasal bone, which is still visible today, and smashed my dentures. Then he choked me until I fell to the floor. Then I was given some water to wash up, and had to use my hands to dry myself. Then, sharpened matches were driven ½ to 1 cm deep underneath all ten fingernails and then lit, so that my fingernails caught fire. During this I was forced to hold my hands up. I almost fainted from the agony. I was supposed to sign a statement to the effect that on November 16, 1945 I had threatened to murder my administrator's family and set the whole town on fire. I did not sign the statement despite the torture. Then I was sent home. Half an hour later Lenert came by again and forbade me to tell anyone about what had been done to me. The next day the gendarmerie took up the case, and I was ordered to see a doctor. Lenert was not to be seen for 3 days after that, but then he did return and is still in Domeschau today.

 

Duppau
(near Kaaden)

 

Reported by: Eduard Grimm Report of January 19, 1947

I served in the Czechoslovak gendarmerie and was ordered 1945 to take over the position of the mayor of Duppau near Karlsbad, who had fled.

The first to be shot in Duppau by the Czechs was the German soldier Franz Weis, who was on a visit to his poor mother and his little sisters and brothers. The corpse was thrown in the market place and left lying there.

Shortly afterwards two war invalids, Josef Wagner and Franz Mahr, both from Duppau, who had been enlisted in the SS without their agreement and who lay at home seriously wounded, were arrested by the Czechs and shot.

The following members of the teaching staff of the High School at Duppau were murdered: the principal of the school, Andreas Draht, and three teachers, Damian Hotek, Franz Wenisch, Rudolf Neudörfl, all of them entirely innocent.

Karl Schuh, the postmaster, was first bestially tortured and then killed. All those named above were shot or killed in other ways by the Czech military; the Czech commanders were at that time Captain Baxa and Lieutenant Tichý.

At the small village of Totzau near Kaaden the mayor Schmidt, the forester Bartl and his two sons, as well as other Germans, altogether supposedly 34 German men, were killed, though innocent of any crime, because they were in possession of a few arms for the protection of their homes, notwithstanding the fact that they had obtained the necessary permits from the American occupation forces at Karlsbad.

In October 1945, the wife of one Holzknecht, a knacker from Dörfles near Duppau, heard a suspicious noise one night and therefore looked out of the window; she was then shot by a Czech gendarme.

At Puschwitz, in the district of Podersam, the German farmer Stengl was barbarously tortured and shot. He was accused of having hidden a gun in his manure heap; this was untrue. Close to the county town of Podersam, in the vicinity of the Jewish cemetery, more than 80 defenceless German men were shot by Czech military in August 1945. Most of the shot men had nothing to do with Nazism or politics, they were ordinary German farmers, artisans and salesmen, among them the mayor Groschup, from Gross-Otschehau, and Pfaff, a bookbinder from Podersam, an old man with white hair.

German women were horribly maltreated and died from the effects: the wife of a certain Knic in Radnitz, a dairy owner, and the wife of one Marek, a salesman from Mekl in the district of Kaaden.

German women and girls from Duppau had to fell trees, even in winter, in deep snow; 18-year-old Anna Grund, daughter and only supporter of her aged, ill parents, was killed by a falling tree.

Alois Guth, a confectioner from Duppau, in the district of Kaaden, was also murdered by the Czechs, although entirely innocent, on June 26th, 1945 in the garden of the High School at Duppau. This was reported by his brother Julius Guth. Alois Guth had intended to remove from this garden a wooden cross, which had been erected in honour of his son, who fell in the war; he was caught and, together with 21 other innocent Sudeten Germans, was shot in the garden of the former archepiscopal boys' seminary, after they all had had to dig their own graves.

The aged Mrs. Jansky from Duppau was threatened with hanging by the Czechs of the Sbor Národní Bezpečnosti (National Security Corps), in order to extort from her information about other Germans. They put a rope around her neck, pulled her off the ground, so that she almost suffocated, set her free again and repeated the torture until she fainted.

Josef Glatz, aged 13, was put in the court jail at Duppau for 6 weeks, together with other innocent boys. Glatz and the other boys were beaten by Czech gendarmerie with police truncheons on the back, evening after evening.

 

Report No. 165

 

Reported by: Friedrich Liebner Report of January 12, 1946 (Duppau)

A closed transport of 400 Germans left the little town of Duppau for Saxony as early as July 25, 1945. In the course of the following six months the majority of the remaining German population of Duppau was deported to the Bohemian interior for forced labor.

These deportations were accompanied by numerous brutalities. For example, Mrs. Knie of Rednitz near Duppau had been found to have sewed some bank notes, which were after all her property, into her girdle. As punishment she was stripped naked at the Czech gendarmerie office in Duppau, and beaten so badly that two days later, after she had already been abducted to Bernau, she died of a spinal cord injury.

Due to their inaccessible location, the towns in the Duppau mountains are largely still inhabited by Germans. Only in Duppau itself were the farmsteads taken over by Czechs.

Recently all men between the ages of 16 and 45 were arrested and taken away for forced labor in the Brüx coal-mining region.

 

Report No. 166

 

Reported by: Alois Zörkler Report of December 31, 1946 (Duppau)

In September 1945 the gendarmerie performed a house-search one afternoon in my home at Duppau No. 7, District Kaaden. In the process they beat me unconscious for no reason at all. Ever since then I suffer from a buzzing in my left ear. Various items were stolen from me during the house-search.

 

Eipel

 

Reported by: Dr. Rudolf Fernegg Report of June 21, 1951

The son of the owner of Buxbaum Brothers linen spinning and weaving mill at Eipel left for the United States even before the German annexation of the Sudeten territories and the establishment of the Protectorate. During the period of the Third Reich the whole family followed him to America. Mr. Buxbaum jun., who had in the meantime become an American citizen, established contact with the personnel of the factory, in order to ascertain their opinion as to whether he would be able to take over his factories in Eipel again. He received the answer that nothing could be done.

 

Eisenstein

 

Reported by: Alois Sperl Report of June 28, 1946

I was arrested in Eisenstein on May 18, 1945 and taken to the court prison in Klattau, where I was repeatedly severely maltreated. I sustained an injury to one of my kidneys, and the stump of my arm was beaten bloody at the amputation point. In both cases I was denied treatment by the prison doctor. I had to bandage my arm stump with my dirty handkerchief. Even though I was an invalid I nonetheless had to crawl on the ground and submit to other harassments. I was not given any reason for my arrest. Later I was always told that it was because I had allegedly tried to defend Eisenstein.

 

Eisenstein-Grün

 

Reported by: Klara Obermaier Report of June 28, 1946

At the end of May 1946 my son, who was not yet 10 years old, was so badly beaten by a gendarme at Grün in the district of Eisenstein that he bled for hours. Since that time the child's hearing has been impaired. The circumstances were as follows: The policeman found my boy still on the street at 5 minutes past the curfew hour of nine o'clock. First he booked him for a fine, but then he crossed this out, took the child into the gendarmerie station and beat him up.

Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
Survivors speak out