MOTTO OF SUDETEN GERMAN DAYS’ EXTREMELY AGGRESSIVE-HISTORIAN
Czech News Agency
May 29, 2006 Monday
Munich, May 29 (CTK) – The motto of this year’s traditional Sudeten
German Days that will take place in Nuremberg next weekend is extremely
aggressive, the most aggressive in the history of these rallies,
German historian Martin Schulze Wessel says in the daily Sueddeutsche
Zeitung today. The motto, Expulsion is genocide, does not correspond
to historic reality, but it indicates those unclear but wide demands
towards the Czech Republic and clearly harms Czech-German relations,
Wessel says. “The expulsion is genocide – the future belongs to the
right for a homeland.” Even at the time of the Cold War the Sudeten
German Landsmannschaft rallies’ motto had never been so aggressive.
What do they mean by this?” the author asks and points out that it
is no coincidence that the German terms for genocide and expulsion
differ – they both express evil, but describe different kind of
injustice. The scientific research of genocides aroused the question
of where is the line dividing forced transfer and genocide, but only in
the case of the Holocaust of Jews and the extermination of Armenians by
Turks in 1915 it is possible to put the sign of equation between both
terms. Although the expulsion of Germans from the former Czechoslovakia
was accompanied, especially in the initial phase, by atrocities and
the deaths of tens of thousands of people were expected there was no
planned intention of physical extermination of the German-speaking
population, and the Sudeten Germans had a country that admitted them
– Germany to which they have integrated with the remarkable effort,
Wessels says. The fate of the Sudeten Germans was bad enough so why
there are efforts today to exaggerate it and put it on the level of
genocide? he asks. It is a political message, but given that the Nazis
prepared a real genocide of the Czech people since 1940 it can only
harm Czech-German relations, the says. The second part of this year’s
motto – the future belongs to the right for a homeland – can provoke
the impression that the Sudeten Germans are interested in restitution
and compensation. They still have the “return of their homeland back”
put as a goal in their programme. “If it is viewed metaphorically,
it is all right but to perceive it very specifically it can mean a
revisionist goal,”Wessels says. “To put the expulsion on the level
of genocide creates a moral reproach of the greatest calibre towards
Czechs and in connection with the right for a homeland it forms the
basis for the demands of a not quite specified revision,” he says. It
is not therefore surprising that 38 percent of Czechs believe that
it is possible for the German government to once raise the claim for
the regions that were populated by Germans in the past or to demand
the compensation and the same part of the population suspect the
Landsmannschaft of really pursuing these goals. Only four percent
of Czechs believe that the Expellees’ associations pursue friendly
contacts, Wessel says. These findings should alarm politicians
because the image of the nations is also decisive for other decisions,
for instance, about investments or language studies. Many positive
initiatives by the Sudeten Germans in Czech-German relations do not
unfortunately have any chance in this media atmosphere to win over
the persuasive slogans by expellees’ unions’ leaders, Wessel, who
is a deputy chairman of the Czech-German commission of historians
says. Sudeten German Landsmannschaft leader Bernd Posselt had
rejected his statements in an interview with the German news agency
dpa. He described Wessel as a politicising scientist who crosses his
powers. According to Posselt, modern historical science describes any
form of expulsion as genocide. The expellees do not want to lacerate
old wounds but they want to prevent similar events from being repeated
in the future.