Opponents only, no collaborators

by Cliopatria

Czech PM Paroubek apologized to Germans who were expelled in 1945 by Benes. Well, at least those Germans who were"anti-Fascists."

"We are correcting an injustice committed against our German co-citizens,'' Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek said. The apology is for"the opponents of Nazism who were affected by measures taken by former Czechoslovakia against its so-called enemy citizens after WWII.''

"We are documenting that the Benes decrees did not refer to anti-fascists,'' Paroubek continued."We are expressing our admiration, appreciation and apology to the significant minority of those Czechoslovak citizens of German descent,'' who"had remained faithful.''

The conditionality is delicious. Who are these loyal ethnic Germans, the Sudetenlaender who resisted the annexation, occupation, who did not benefit from the special privileges given to ethnic Germans over ethnic Slavs and Jews? What commission determined who they were?

The government promises to locate these people and to remunerate the loss of property, but I think that they will step into their own historiographic nightmare as they try to sort out what it meant to have collaborated and resisted. Good Luck!

(Cross-posted at The Rhine River.)

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Alan Allport - 8/26/2005

I can't help thinking this is a great time to be studying "aftermath of war" related topics.

God, I hope so ...

Konrad M Lawson - 8/26/2005

Absolutely fascinating stuff, thanks for posting this and if there is somewhere I can read more about the statement and what will come out of it, I hope to hear more ( konrad at lawson dot net).

Also, just last year Frommer, Benjamin "National Cleansing : Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia" came out (haven't had a chance to get through anything but the intro yet). Don't know if it covers the broader ethnic cleansing though.

I can't help thinking this is a great time to be studying "aftermath of war" related topics (My own desired area of broad concentration for my future studies).

Here in Stavanger, Norway, I just discovered a whole series of books just published last year on the the aftermath of war here in Norway...published in the series "Å overkomme fortiden" which includes fascinating new work on many of these kinds of issues.

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/25/2005

Before we say someone's logic is garbled, let's find out who translated the statement and how well that was done.

chris l pettit - 8/25/2005

I am wracking my brain trying to remember a great book that I read during law school regarding the degrees of complicity within a society such as Nazi Germany (or the US, Israel, Russia, and others currently) and where ommission and apathy rank on the list. It was a really fascinating text, as it was attempting to deal with criminal law aspects, both nationally and internationally, that were dealt with within the "rule of law" instead of biased ideological hierarchies. In that context, omission and apathy while benefitting were still types of complicity generating culpability, although very much on the lower end of the spectrum. Note that this is not discussiong whether one could seek punative measures against such individuals, or whether it was even possible at that point to tell whether it was intentional or examine all the other factors involved, but simply to examine it in terms of complicity and culpability and at least acknowledge that it exists.

The comments made by the guy are truly garbled verbiage and it seems as though the intentions are somewhat overshadowed by the choice of expression. One wonders how the history will be interpreted...if at all.

CP

Alan Allport - 8/25/2005

Perhaps Paroubek has never read Utz ...