The ANNOTICO Report
The History of a War is written by the Victors, and often in a biased and prejudiced manner, and seldom do the Victors present an even handed accurate version of events, either during the War or After.
No matter how patriotic we feel, we can not consider ourselves a civilized or "moral" people if we condemn the actions of our adversaries, while condoning similar actions of our own. We should be ever vigilant to NOT Always portray ourselves as the Good Guys.
[As an aside, and in reference to current events, It is unwise to depict or demonize any one who opposes our Point of View as Bad Guys. Nor should we feel that Others are Not equally entitled to act in their own Self Interest as we act in our own!!!!!]
But back to the Topic.
We are well versed on the Atrocities of the Germans and Japanese during
WWII.
[Strangely, I don't
remember hearing of any Atrocities by Italian troops.]
I will Focus first on German Atrocities against Italians,
But few know, since
little has been said of Allied Atrocities during WWII. I will follow with
Allied Atrocities against Italians,
then Allied Atrocities
against Germans.
How many Italian Americans know of German Massacres of Italian CIVILIANS during WWII, and even less are aware of ALLIED Atrocities and Massacres against Italian CIVILIANS.
Interestingly, and a source of GREAT disappointment, while the Germans were ruthless in their Massacres, the ALLIES engaged in a greater degree of Atrocities, such as Rape against Italian CIVILIAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!!!
Here is a Brief Summary, But PLEASE Remember that these are only TEN (10) of around FOUR HUNDRED (400) mass killings committed in ITALY involving the loss of some 15,000 CIVILIANS.
This does NOT include
Military Massacres the most notable being Cephalonia, in which TEN THOUSAND
(10,000) Italian Military were Massacred by the Germans in ONE Episode!!!!
(Movie: "Captain Corelli's Mandolin")!
http://www.nrw.vvn-bda.de/texte/mittenwald_engl.htm
And this is FAR Eclipsed
by the inhumane, and indifferent treatment/ annihilation of Italian POWs
in Russia!!!
Monte Cassino fell to
the Allies on May 18, 1944. The next night thousands of French Moroccan,
Algerian, Tunisian and Senegalese troops, attached to the French Expeditionary
Corps, swarmed over the slopes of the hills surrounding Monte Cassino and
in the small village of Ciociaria, raped every woman and girl that came
within their sight. Over 2,000 women, ranging in age from 11 years to 86
years suffered at the hands of these gang-raping soldiers as village after
village was entered. Menfolk who tried to protect their wives and
daughters were murdered without mercy, around 800 of them died. Two sisters
aged 15 and 18 were raped by dozens of soldiers each. One died from the
abuse, the other was still in a mental hospital in 1997, 53 years after
the event. Most of the dwellings in the villages were destroyed and everything
of value was stolen.
[ Later in the war,
these same troops raped around 500 women in the Black Forrest town of Freudenstadt,
on April 17, 1945]
[In Stuttgart, colonial
French troops, mostly African, but under the command of General Eisenhower,
rounded up around 2,000 women and herded them into the underground subways
to be raped.
In one week more women
were raped in Stuttgart than in the whole of France during the four year
German occupation!!!!!!! }
THE 'FOIBE' MASSACRES
(Between September, 1943 and late June, 1945)
In the Italian regions
of Istria, Fiume and Dalmazia on the north-eastern borders of Italy (modern
day Slovenia and Croatia) thousands of civilian Italian men, women, children
and some soldiers were massacred between September, 1943 and late June,
1945. The killings in these disputed regions were perpetrated by Yugoslav
communist partisans of the Titoists regime. In the Karst region in the
hinterland of Trieste, the killings took place in the mountainous regions
dotted with thousands of 'foibe' (deep chasms, yawning crevasses and cavernous
pits) into which the bodies of the victims were thrown. As some Italian
Leftists were involved in these murders, and the Leftists were in control
of the Italian government for the next 5 decades, the story was banished
from all Italian history books for over sixty years. (RAA: Isn't Politics
wonderful?? :( )Today, in Italy, February 28 is Remembrance Day, commemorating
the Italian civilians massacred in the foibes. VIA RASELLA (Rome,
March 23, 1944)
Twenty eight SS policemen were killed by a roadside bomb, and sixty others wounded, Hitler, on hearing of the bombing, immediately ordered that 10 Italians were to be shot for every policeman killed. Within twenty four hours, 335 people were loaded onto lorries and driven to a network of caves on the Via Ardeatina, where they were executed. The instigator of this attack was Marxist medical student Rosario Bentivegna, helped by partisan member Carla Capponi whom he later married, and who also became a member of the Italian Parliament.Today, the Ardeatina Caves is a Memorial. Nearby is the Mausoleum containing the stone sarcophagi of the 335 victims.
SANT' ANNA MASSACRE
(August 12, 1944)
Just north of Pisa,
between the towns of Lucca and Currara, lay the small village of Sant'
Anna di Stazzema. On August 12, the German armies were retreating northwards,
ideal terrain for partisan activity. Many of the German troops were killed
in ambushes and skirmishes with the Italian underground movement.A battalion
of the 16th Panzergrenadier ?Reichsf?hrer-SS? Division, reached the outskirts
of Sant' Anna, their orders to shoot on sight all partisans found in the
area. Believing that the inhabitants of the Sant'Anna were all partisans
or partisan sympathizers, the SS gathered together on the village square,
the men, women and children, who were then shot in cold blood. In all,
560 people were massacred including 110 children. (On the 60th anniversary
commemoration ceremony a German government representative attended the
ceremony and for the first time the national flags of the two countries
were flying in the wind together)!
ATROCITY AT BARDINE SAN TERENZO (August 20, 1944)
Seventeen German soldiers had been ambushed and killed. A search of various villages was undertaken where the SS looted and burned a number of houses. Fifty-three villagers of Mezzana Castello were shot. Fifty four from Bardine were taken to Valla and there, shot. A total of 107 persons. Only five were men, the rest, women and children. In the four days that the search continued, a total of 369 hostages were brutally massacred and 454 houses destroyed by fire.
SLAUGHTER ON MONTE SOLE (September 29 to October 1st, 1944)
About twenty kilometres south of Bologna is the massif of Monte Sole, part of the Apennine range. Around this area are dozens of small villages and towns, Marzabotto, Girzzana and Monzuno, Sperticano, Cerpiano, San Martino, Creda and Casaglia to name but a few. When Italy surrendered to the Allies on Sept. 8, 1943, Fascist and German troops continued their harassment of these poor mountain people. To defend themselves, they formed themselves into small partisan groups, augmented by deserters from the Italian and German armies (ex Russian P.O.W.s). The SS formed up for a mass attack on Monte Sole on Friday, 29th Sept. 1944. At Creda, all the men, women and children, about 90 Italians were assembled and machine-gunned, with incendiary bombs used to burn them to death. This scene was repeated at every tiny village and farmlet as ! the SS units continued their march. Soon, hundreds of fires could be seen on and around Monte Sole, each one a funeral pyre. At Marzabotto, 955 people were shot including 216 children and 316 women. This was Italy's worst wartime atrocity. During the three days of the rastrellamento (Sept. 29 to Oct. 1st) a total of around 1,830 men, women and children, were brutally murdered by the SS and 420 houses burned. When the SS murder squads moved on, the killing continued as relatives of the victims, searching for the bodies of their loved ones, stepped on the deadly mines laid by the SS. In 1998, the 54th anniversary of the massacre, the German President Johannes Rau, made a formal apology to Italy and expressed his 'profound sorrow and shame' to the families of the victims of Marzabotto.
THE BOVES ATROCITY (September 17, 1944)
A few kilometres north of Cuneo in Italy, lies the town of Boves. After September 8th, 1943, it became an active center of the Italian underground comprised of many stragglers from the now disbanded Regio Esercito (Royal Italian Army). The SS killed Forty-three and 350 houses destroyed.
THE BRETTO ATROCITY (March 23, 1945)
The power station at Bretto, near Udine, in Northern Italy, was guarded by a unit of the Italian Carabinieri consisting if twelve men Yugoslav communist partisans supported by the British captured the outpost, afterwhich the Carabinieri were given food containing a mixture of caustic soda and black salt. The Carabineri were then stripped, tied up and brutally murdered by pickaxes. Some had their genitalia amputated and stuck in their mouths, eyes were gouged out.Their remains lie forgotten by their countrymen and by history, under the merciful care of nuns, living in a nearby convent.
OVARO and AVANZIS
KILLINGS (May 2, 1945)
The atrocities here
were committed not by the SS but by a Russian Cossack regiment attached
to the German army. At Qvaro, a village in the Butt Valley near Udine,
the Cossacks, were retreating northwards toward the Pl?cken Pass
and into Austria with the intention of surrendering to the British occupation
forces. Italian partisans, hidden in the steep cliffs and woods around
Qvaro, decided to attack the retreating Cossacks. The Partisans inflicted
heavy casualties on the column of Russians. Commander Major Nausikof shot
the parish priest and twenty one innocent civilians. At the village of
Avanzis another atrocity was committed, this time by German troops from
the garrisons at Trieste and Istria who were snipped at by partisans and
causing between 70 and 80 casualties. In reprisal, 51 defenceless civilians
were killed and 25 wounded.
THE CIVITELLA KILLINGS (June 29, 1944)
In their retreat to the north, German units passed through the Tuscan village of Civitella, near Arezzo. The Germans gathered all the men including the local priest and shot them all. There seems to be no logical reason for this atrocity but could be a random response to defeat, humiliation and retreat. Altogether 119 male citizens were executed.
ATROCITIES IN SICILY (1943)
During the Allied assault on Sicily, (July, 1943) about a dozen unarmed civilians, including some children, were apprehended by US troops after the town of Canicatti surrendered. The civilians were reported to have entered a bombed out soap and food factory and were filling buckets with liquid soap that had spilled on the ground. At around 6pm, an American officer, a lieutenant-colonel, entered the factory and fired point blank into the crowd. He reloaded and fired again. Eight of the civilians, including an eleven year old girl, died. The officer and soldiers then drove off. Fearing reprisals from the residents of the town, the incident was hushed up for over sixty years. Due to the efforts of Dr. Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, this atrocity was brought to light. The perpetrator of this crime, Lieutenant Colonel McCaffery, died in 1954.
Many massacres of prisoners of war were committed by units of the American 45th (Thunderbird) Division during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. At Comise Airfield, a truck load of 60 Italian prisoners were were machine-gunned as they climbed down on to the tarmac, prior to be air-lifted out. Prior that day of German prisoners were cut down the same way.
On July 14, thirty six prisoners were gunned down near Gela by their guard, US Sergeant Barry West.
At Buttera Airfield, US Captain Jerry Compton, lined up his 43 prisoners against a wall and machine-gunned them to death.
West and Compton were both arrested and convicted of murder. They were later sent to the front where both were killed in action. Both had claimed that they were only following orders and quoted General Paton's speech to them earlier, "When we land against the enemy, don't forget to hit him and hit him hard. When we meet the enemy we will kill him. We will show him no mercy. He has killed thousands of your comrades and he must die".
[When the 45th Division
was first formed its members wore a red square patch on their left shoulder.
Inside the patch was a yellow swastika, an ancient American Indian sign
of good luck. When, in the 1930s, the symbol became so slosely associated
with German fascist socialism it had to be abandoned as the insigna of
the Division. ]
Allied troops, as well as Axis troops, committed terrible atrocities during the war. Some years after the war a mass grave of some 200 SS soldiers was discovered just west of the city of Nuremberg. Most had been shot at close range, the others beaten to death by the rifle butts of the US Seventh Army GIs. In the village of Eberstetten, 17 German soldiers of the 'Gotz von Berlichingen' Division were shot after they surrendered to US troops.
On April 8, 1945, fourteen members of the 116th Panzer Division were marched through the streets of Budberg to the command post of the US 95th Infantry Division. There, they were lined up and shot. Three were wounded but managed to escape.
On April 13, 1945, the US 97th or 78th Infantry Division the village of Spitze, about fifteen miles east of Cologne captured twenty German soldiers, marched several hundred yards to a field just outside the village, where they were lined up and mowed down by machine-gun fire.
During the fighting in Norway and Finland, the SS Gebirgsdivision 'Nord', was opposing the Russian forces. Very few SS men were taken prisoners by the Red Army, most were shot immediately. A report on Operation No 11 from the Soviet 26th Division states: The enemy left approximately 400 dead on the battlefield. Some 80 Germans had surrendered and were executed.
In the notes found on a Soviet doctor after he was captured, he had written: 'All POW's who belonged to the German Army were executed during the operations near Odessa'.
Soviet archives reveal the following: 'July 7, 1943, the enemy suffered great losses...we did not take any prisoners, they were all liquidated'.
At the village of Chenogne in Belgium a group of twenty-one German soldiers emerged from a burning building carrying a Red Cross flag. Their intention was to surrender to the US forces but as they exited the doorway they were shot down by machine-gun and small arms fire.
GERMANY
STARVATION AT REMAGEN
After the capture of the Remagen Bridge, the US Army hastily erected dozens of Prisoner of War cages around the bridge-head. The camps were simply open fields surrounded by concertina wire. Those at the Rhine Meadows were situated at Remagen, Bad Kreuznach, Andernach, Buderich, Rheinbach and Sinzig. The German prisoners were herded into the open spaces like cattle, some were beaten and mistreated. No tents or toilets were supplied. The camps became huge latrines, a sea of urine from one end to the other. They had to sleep in holes in the ground which they dug with their bare hands. In the Bad Kreuznach cage, 560,000 men were interned in an area that could only comfortably hold 45,000. Denied enough food and water, they were forced to eat the grass under their feet and the camps soon became a sea of mud. GIs vented their ra! ge on the hapless prisoners.
In the five camps around Bretzenheim, prisoners had to survive on 600-850 calories per day. With bloated bellies and teeth falling out, they died by the thousands. During the two and a half months (April-May, 1945) when the camps were under American control, a total of 18,100 prisoners died from malnutrition, disease and exposure. This extremely harsh treatment at the hands of the Americans resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 German prisoners of war in the Rhine Meadows camps alone in the months just before and after the war ended. By April 15, 1945, 1.3 million prisoners were in American hands. At war's end, 1,056,482 German prisoners were held in US camps in Europe, 692,895 were classified as prisoners of War and 365,587 classified as DEF's (Disarmed Enemy Forces)
HOW MANY?
Just how many German POWs died in Allied camps? For over forty years we have been told that many hundreds of thousands of German soldiers had died in Soviet prison camps while at the same time keeping quiet about the number of prisoners who had died in American, French and British camps.
In 1997, around 1.1 million German soldiers were still officially listed as missing. According to the recently opened Soviet archives, which have been proved to be extremely precise and detailed, the Red Army captured 2,389,560 German soldiers. Of these, 423,168 died in captivity.
In October, 1951, the West German government stated in the United Nations that 1.1 million soldiers had not returned home. In other words, we were led to believe they had died in Soviet camps. If we subtract the proven number of deaths in Soviet camps from the missing in Germany we arrive at the figure of around 677,000. Where are these men?. They must have been interned by the western Allies, the greatest majority being held in American and French camps where they died in their thousands through deliberate starvation, disease and hard work.
The standards set by the Geneva Convention were, in most cases, totally ignored by the Americans and French in relation to their treatment of German prisoners-of-war. The French deliberately starved many of their POWs in order to force them to join the French Foreign Legion. Thousands of Legionaires who fought in the Vietnam conflict were Germans, handed over by the Americans to the French in 1945/46 to work as slave labourers in the rebuilding of France's war damaged cities. Conditions in the French camps were just as bad if not worse than in the American camps. It is estimated that at least 167,000 German soldiers died in French captivity between 1945 and 1948.
ARCHIVE RECORDS
In a large building in Berlin and staffed by 365 people is housed the military records of every German soldier who served in World War 11. There are kilometres of shelves holding about eighteen million files on every man and woman in the German armed forces. 18,000 requests are received each year inquiring about family members of whom they have heard nothing since 1945. In a Russian archive at Podolsk, south of Moscow there are names of 700,000 German POWs once held in Soviet prisons, yet the whereabouts of 480,000 of these men remain unresolved today.
DRESDEN (February 13/14, 1945)
This city of culture is situated on both sides of the Elbe river. Of no tactical or strategic value to the German war effort it was considered 'safe' from destruction by air attacks. By 1945 it became a shelter for some 350,000 refugees fleeing from the approaching Red Army. At the Yalta conference Stalin requested more action against cities such as Berlin, Leipzig and Chemnitz. No mention was made of Dresden. The fact that Dresden was chosen was because the Russians at that time were only fifty kilometres away from the city, much nearer to Dresden than than they were to Berlin, Leipzig or Chemnitz. No doubt Churchill was eager to impress the Soviet leader, Stalin. RAF and USAAF bombers devastated the city in the most concentrated incendiary attack of the war in Europe (Operation Thunderclap) In all, 733 British bombers dropped 1,478 tons of high explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs and 311 US Flying Fortresses! dropped 771 tons of bombs on the city. Around 35,000 persons were reported as 'missing' after the fire-storm which engulfed the city and destroyed eleven square miles of its center including 14,000 houses, 22 hospitals, 72 schools and 31 department stores. By the 10th of March, 18,375 dead and 2,212 seriously injured were accounted for. In one of the city squares 6,865 bodies were cremated. Thousands of British and American prisoners-of-war were on work detail in the city from the large POW camp Stalag IVb at nearby Muehlberg. Casualties among the prisoners were fewer than a hundred. Around 200,000 refugees from the east were camped in the city's 'Grosser Garten'. It was estimated that about 1,300,000 people were in the city as the raid started. The toll would have been much higher had not some bomber crews, knowing that thousands of refugees were in the city, deliberately jettisoned their bomb loads wide of the mark. It is doubtful that the air attack o! n Dresden shortened the war by even one day. At this point of the war, Germany was on the brink of collapse so why give the still twitching corpse this one final brutal kick? Churchill was later to say "The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing". In 1956 Dresden and Coventry in England (1,236 deaths) entered a twin-town relationship.
GANG RAPE IN NEMMERSDORF
Just inside the east Prussian border with Soviet occupied Lithuania, the town of Nemmersdorf was the first to fall (temporarily) into the hands of the victorious Red Army. Overrun by General Gatlitsky's 11th Guards Army, his soldiers, crazy with bloodlust, set about raping, looting and killing with such ferocity that eventually discipline had to be restored to force the soldiers back to fighting the war. From buildings, Russian signs were hung which read 'Soldiers! Majdanek does not forgive. Take revenge without mercy!'. When the Soviet 4th Army took over the town five days later, hardly a single inhabitant remained alive. Women were found nailed to barn doors after being stripped naked and gang raped, their bodies then used for target practice. Many women, and girls as young as eight years old, were raped so often and brutally that they died from this abuse alone. Children were shot indiscriminately and all those! trying to flee were crushed to death under the treads of the Soviet tanks. Forty French prisoners-of-war were shot on the spot as spies after welcoming the Red Army as liberators. Seventy one women and one man were found in houses, all dead. All the women, including girls aged from eight to twelve, had been raped.
In other East Prussian villages within the triangle Gumbinnen-Goldap-Ebenrode, the same scenes were witnessed, old men and boys being castrated and their eyes gouged out before being killed or burned alive. In nearby Metgethen, a suburb of K?nigsberg, recaptured by the German 5th Panzer Division, around 60 women were found in a demented state in a large villa. They had been raped on average 60 to 70 times a day. In nearly every home, the bodies of women and children were found raped and murdered. The bodies of two young women were found, their legs had been tied one limb each between two trucks, and then torn apart when the trucks were driven away in opposite directions. At Metgethen railway station, a refugee train from Konigsberg, consisting of seven passenger coaches, was found and in each compartment seven to nine bestially mutilated bodies were discovered. In the town of Niesse in Silesia, 182 Catholic nuns were raped ! and debauched daily by the Russians. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, an ex captain in the Soviet Army, recalls, "All of us knew very well that if girls were German they could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat distinction" (Details of these, and other atrocities, are contained in the Eastern Documentation Section of the German Federal Archives in Berlin)
The orgy of rape by Soviet troops was far greater than at first believed. Even women and young girls, newly liberated from concentration camps in Poland and in Germany, were brutally violated.
REVENGE AT NEUSTETTIN (February, 1945)
On the 16th of February, soldiers of the First White Russian Army occupied the town of Neustettin just inside the German border with Poland. In the town was the 'Wilmsee' camp of the German R.A.D. (Reich Women's Labour Service). In the huts were some 500 uniformed girls of the RAD. They were taken to the foreign workers barracks at the local iron foundry. All were considered by the Russians to be members of an illegal army. In an office set up by the Russian commissar groups of girls were brought in and ordered to undress. Two men (believed to be Poles) then entered and grabbing one of the girls bent her backwards over the edge of a table and then proceeded to cut off her breasts before the eyes of the others. Her screams were accompanied by cheers and howls of approval from the Russians. The same fate awaited all the others each procedure becoming ever more cruel. More girls were brought in continually and out in the courtyar! d hundreds were clubbed to death, only the prettiest being led to the commissars office for torture and death. A few days later when a German tank unit from Cottbus temporarily recaptured the town they were utterly devastated by what they saw. Survivors told of what they had seen. Mothers had to witness their ten and twelve year old daughters being raped by up to twenty soldiers, the daughters in turn witnessing their mothers being raped, even their grandmothers. In most houses in the town nearly every room contained naked and dead women with the Swastika symbol crudely carved on their abdomens. No mercy was shown to the women and girls of Neustettin. It is estimated that about 2,000 girls that had been in the RAD and BDM (League of German Girls) camps in and around the town were raped and murdered in the few days of the Soviet occupation.
NAHRENDORF (Near Hamburg, 1945)
The British Army's 'Desert Rats' were engaged in a fierce battle with the SS defenders in the village of Nahrendorf, who after surrendering, 42 SS soldiers were found in a shallow grave.
The former concentration camps of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were taken over by the the Soviets after World War II and became brutal Soviet-run prisons. Tens of thousands of German civilians were arrested during the Soviet occupation. Anyone, young or old, who had any connection with the Hitler regime, or showed signs of unfriendliness to the new communist rulers, were arrested and thrown into these camps without trial. Exposure, starvation and disease soon took their toll. After the collapse of the Communist Government in 1990 investigations were undertaken to trace those many thousands of young men and boys who had simply disappeared. In 1991, excavations at Sachsenhausen uncovered around fifty mass graves 25 feet by 13 feet wide. Digging revealed bodies stacked 15 feet and higher. It was reported by the Brandenburg State that the bodies of 25,500 persons were found at Sachsenhausen. In other mass graves, at F?nfeichen, Lam! sdorf and Ketschendorf, the German Government estimates that another 65,000 bodies will eventually be discovered.
THE BLEIBURG-MARIBOR MASSACRES (May, 1945)
During the last days of the war, the Croatian armed forces, as well as tens of thousands of civilian refugees, fled towards Austria to escape the wrath of the Yugoslav communist partisans. In Austria, the British army was waiting about to accept their surrender in a field at Bleiburg, on the Austrian-Slovenia border. An estimated 100,000 Croatian troops and civilian refugees were gathered in a field while negotiations proceeded. In the woods surrounding the field, Titoist Partisans had set up positions. and without warning, the Titoists opened fire with machine-guns.The crowd of troops and refugees, too densely packed to move freely, fell in droves. Within minutes, thousands of bodies lay dead or dying. To add to the horror, hundreds of horses, some still harnessed to their carts, panicked and dragged their wagons over the bodies of the fallen. Those that survived were simply driven back across the border to be dealt with by the waiting parti! sans.
On other parts of the border, masses of Croatian soldiers and civilians were turned back after being disarmed by the British forces. Crammed into trains and military vehicles like sheep, they were told that they were being transported to camps in Italy, but at Maribor they were handed over to Tito's partisans, only to be shot down in their thousands in a massacre that lasted over a week.
The 17th Partisan Assault Division, under the direction of Serbian officers, carried out the massacre of some 40,000 persons in the Tezen Forest at Maribor. At Sestine, 5,000 were murdered, at Vrgin Most another 7,000 fell to the partisan's bullets. Untold thousands of Serbs and Slovene Home Guard (Domobranci) from the camp at Viktring in Austria were massacred in a most brutal fashion and their naked bodies thrown into a deep chasm at Kocevje after which grenades were thrown in. There were about three or four survivors from this massacre. In total, 12,196 Croats, 5,480 Serbs, 8,263 Slovenes and 400 Montenegrins were handed over to the partisans.
It is estimated that around 180,000 Croatian soldiers and civilian refugees were massacred by Tito's communists.
To date, around 110 mass gravesites have been discovered in Slovenian territory since the fall of the communist regime in 1990. Slovenia, it seems, is full of Katyn Forrests.
THE EXPULSION TRAGEDY
The merciless revenge perpetrated on the entire German civilian population of Eastern Europe during the closing stages of the war, and for many months after, took the lives of over 2,100,000 ethnic German men, women and children. For generations these Germans had lived and toiled in areas that today are part of central and Eastern Europe. Around fifteen million of these Volksdeutsche were driven from their homes and ancestral lands and forced back into the Allied occupied zones of Germany. In Czechoslovakia, memories of the Lidice massacre inspired acts of revenge against German soldiers and civilians. Soldiers were disarmed, tied to stakes, doused with petrol and set alight. Wounded German soldiers from the hospital were hung up on lamposts in Wenzell Square and fires were lit beneath them so that they died the gruesome death of being roasted alive. These ethnic Germans lived in fear of the Russians but no one thought that the dreadful fate which awaited them would not eve! n emanate from the Soviets at all.
Thousands of innocent German residents were murdered in their homes by the Czechs, others were forced into interment camps where they were beaten and maltreated before being expelled. In Brno, 25,000 German civilians were forced marched at gun-point to into an open field they died by the hundreds from hunger and cold before being rescued.
In the Russian occupied zones of Eastern Europe and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of civilian men and women, Poles, Czechs, Romanians and Germans, were transported to the Urals in the Soviet Union and used as slave labourers until released in the late 40s. Mostly ignored by the world's press, the unimaginable suffering experienced by the expellees is largely unknown outside Germany, yet it was systematically carried out in a brutal fashion as official Allied policy in accordance with the decisions formulated at Yalta and Potsdam.
THE POSTBERG ATROCITIES
Around the small Bavarian village of Postberg (Postoloprty) in the province of Saazerland on the Bavarian-Czech border, 763 German men, women and children were shot to death during the Czech 'ethnic cleansing'. A law, passed by the Czech authorities (The Benesch law: No115/1946) stated that all Czech crimes against Germans were not legible to penalty.
In the town of Aussig on the Elbe River, on July 31, 1945, there was an explosion at the town's cable works. The Czechs suspected sabotage on the part of the ethnic Germans. A blood-bath followed. Women and children were thrown from the Usti bridge into the river. Germans were shot dead on the streets. It was estimated that between 1,000 and 2,500 people were killed in this act of revenge by the Czechs.