222 223 ‘Wild expulsions’ (as opposed to organised expatriations according to the Potsdam Agreement) often involved brutal violence; exhaustion, malnutrition, lack of medical care and disease were frequent causes of death. The German-Czech Historical Committee concluded, in 1996, that the number of casualties caused by the expulsions was in the range of 16,000 to 30,000. Instances of extreme violence such as the notorious ‘Brno March’ caused a high number of casualties (therefore it is also called Brünner Todesmarsch in some German sources and publications). Approximately 20,000 Germans – predominantly women, children, those unfit for work, and men over sixty – were driven from Brünn/Brno and its environs and marched towards Austria in late May 1945. A small number actually crossed the Austrian border, the majority remained in southern Moravia, where they were put into a holding camp in Pohrlitz/ Pohořelice or found shelter in the surrounding villages. By mid-July, about 700 people had died on the Czechoslovak side – most of them in a dysentery epidemic. On the Austrian side of the border, about 1,000 succumbed to exhaustion and disease. The total number of victims remains unknown. (German) in public. The N made many Germans targets of humiliation, abuse and even murder. Already in 1942 and 1943 the Allies had consented in principle to the plans of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to forcibly expel the Germans. Now the country’s political apparatus was set in motion to swiftly deport a large number of Germans. That way the western Allies would be presented with a fait accompli before the Potsdam conference; the Soviet Union supported these plans anyway. From spring to autumn 1945, the Czechoslovak army and various paramilitary units managed to expel an estimated 700,000 Germans across the border to the Soviet occupation zone and to Austria. Any German property had been confiscated beforehand. ‘OFTEN RETAINED BY THE FAMILY’ Andrea Kamp Curatorin ‘BUT I DIDN’T WEAR THAT N.’ Christine Rösch, who had to wear the N badge at the age of 16 ‘A MEASURE AND A SYMBOL’ Volker Zimmermann Historian ARMBAND BELONGING TO HERMINE SPRINZ Senftenberg/Žamberk (Czechoslovakia), 1945 Hermine Sprinz had to wear this armband until her expulsion in summer 1946. SCAN ME
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1