postwar executions of german civilians in Czechoslovakia

[koobleguy]

take a look:

unarmed, only german speaking civilians ( incl Swedish people etc) getting murdered
after the end of ww2 in Czechoslovakia by russian & czechoslovakian troops.

They even run over the dead with their trucks!

It is well known this happend many thousand times, but to see it is quite different!

http://www.bild.de/BILD/video/clip/no-p ... chien.html

[Hans Gowert]

thank you for sharing kooble,

do you know if the bodys were recovered ?

[koobleguy]

no, this is only a part of a longer footage which is about to be published in germany,
but I don't think so, I would have heard about it,

because during the iron curtain and even until today something like that officially "never happend",
so nothing to recover, at maximum something to hide

here they only mention that the dead were hastily burried next to the road as shown,

after that czech officials were even trying to find out, who took pictures or filmed but fortunately
the father of the woman being interviewed was able to hide these filmed documents

[Hans Gowert]

so its possible that these bodys havent been removed to another place ? and that there still in that very grace.


wow, fascinating and sad at the same time. Is there in germany an orginisation set up to recover mass graves like this ? like someone investigating the whereabouts of these graves ?

[koobleguy]

yes, mainly for fallen soldiers & but also killed civillians yes, e.g.

http://www.volksbund.de/

http://www.vbgo.de/

but they can only start working with the permission of the local government
and as this officially never happend, there is hardly any permission to get

+ the remains could have also been removed after the war to a better hidden place,
as happend often after ww2 in yugoslavia, france, italy etc in russia ( I think near Stalingrad) the built
a garbage dump on the remains on 10s of thousands of fallen german soldiers

for reason they czech officials searched for anybody documenting these events with camera

[Hans Gowert]

interesting infomation thanks for sharing.

could you update if you hear anymore ?>

[koobleguy]

yes, I will

[schwarz engel]

hello koobleguy interresting posting , i found the film quite shocking , i didnt understand initially that the civilians were being shot!as for the soviet driven truck being driven over the bodys !
if you come across anymore imformation on this then please post it.
two sides to every coin as we say in engeland.
has anybody identified the road whare this happened ?

[koobleguy]

the lady being shown in the interview was an eyewitness to this when she was little,
her dad filmed the footage, this is a rather short clip of the total film, but the complete film hasn't been shown in germany yet

so I am quite sure, they can identify the street

for similar cases there are very well researched books called "Verbrechen an der Wehrmacht"
Vol I&II about war crimes committed by Sovjet forces on the eastern front etc
don't know, whether there is an english version aswell, but the pics themselves are shocking enough

it was a rather common practice by sovjet forces to even debase the dead,
for e.g. german civilians were forced to line up the dead next to the street (after the end of the war) and then read army tanks ran over the corpses several times, cheering and shouting along..... I even talked to eye witnesses myself, very well documented around Halbe, before that they removed everything that could have identified the dead (like dog tag etc)

war crimes also happend on the western front on both sides, but never to such an extend

[Mooyman]

from these crimes you don't hear much....

you sure that they were not active in ss,army or other divisions?

Many N.S.B(dutch) members were also shot without a trial after the war.

[schwarz engel]

as you have mentioned , halbe the removal and lining up of dead military and civilians and the running over with armour of the dead , the happenings in the ost prussia , sileasa, and the eastern borders of germany , all i am sure we are all aware of ,
justified as payback time perhaps , but it is my opinion that if this was a film of the german armed forces or its allies carrying out this action against civilians, then it would of been deemed as a war crime and those responsible identified and be brought to trial.
i have also seen wiking division replacement battalion troops maybe 50 , machined gunned by american forces near dachau , and have read of numerous other shootings of surrendered personnel by allied forces.
if a war is fought in the name of decency then surely the actions of its forces should be comply to international law .
but as we know the soviets did not sign the pre war convention .
ime sure there was dutch waffen ss mann recentely put on trial in holland for the shooting of members of the resistance during the war.



well thats my 2 pennys worth, perhaps some times its best to let sleeping dogs lie!and move on and hope we europeans do not have to go through all this again, its better if we just fire blanks and pyro 8)and sit around a fire and drink bier!

[koobleguy]

a
ime sure there was dutch waffen ss mann recentely put on trial in holland for the shooting of members of the resistance during the war.

correct, but they put him on trial in germany - but as far as I know, his mistake was (as a lonely old man) to talk too much to the wrong people.... putting an old man to trial like this was a farce....

perhaps some times its best to let sleeping dogs lie

well, I get your point, but being a descendant of the ones who suffered, I at least want their fate to be known,
perhaps I am old fashioned, but for me there are things which are wrong and I then don't care which uniform the ones wore who committed such crimes.

some more examples:

1. near my hometown, when US forces entered it in april/may 45, they shot all males being in the house of the local "SSV", because this short cut was written on the wall outside,
well, SSV means "Schwimm- und Sportverein" / Swimming & sportsclub,.....

2. some HJ boys set up a road block by the end of the war to prevent US forces entering their village,
during the fighting most of them were killed, only one survived wounded,
when the GIs got him, tied him to the back of a tank with a rope & pulled him like this with the tank for kilometers up to on of the next villages until he was finally dead. Then they dumped him like waste in the roadside ditch.
Villagers burried him afterwards.

..... for me it's not about comparing who did what or worse, but from my point of view, on the one hand you are taught what you have to believe in as "facts" (Malmedy trial for example),..... and from the other side your hear nearly nothing and that's something I just cannot call just (just my thoughts).

[dagda]

mmmmmm! It always struck me as odd, that the paragons of Western democracy always denied the excesses of thier armiy in Europe. Some units made it a point of principle to execute any captured fallschirmjager or SS troops that they came across, indeed written orders were giving to other units with the same effect! No post war trials for the authors of those orders!

[koobleguy]

some new article in german press with some additional information:

http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/S ... turedEntry

due to this, the murderers are members of the Red Army and the czech militia

in the film more then 40 men and women are getting murdered

the man who filmed all of this told his daughter "they're goona kill me if I publish that"....
so it was not published until recently

this took place in Borislavka, a part of the city of Prague, the specific place is known,
simple grassland, the massgrave is untouched, but the author of the documentary wants to search for the remains
of the victims, respect for that!

according tho this source:

http://www.fuerther-nachrichten.de/arti ... at=3&man=5

a minimum of 736 men were rounded up that day, which most likely shared the same fate as the victims shown on the film

all of this happend on 10th of may 1945

[koobleguy]

the whole film can be downloaded here the version that was shown on czech TV on the 6th of may,
whether this is official I cannot tell, so everybody has to decide by himself if this hits copyrights, I don't know :

http://ulozto.net/4755573/zabijeni-po-c ... b-t-cz.avi