Several dozen people protested at the Brno city assembly meeting today against the Sudeten German congress to be held in Brno from 22-25 May. The Sudeten Germans were invited to Brno by representatives of the Meeting Brno festival.
The protesters said they did not consider the event a path to reconciliation, but rather a provocation. Deputy Mayor Rene Cerny (Independent) said the conference would be a private event that the city cannot ban.
The congress is organised by the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft (SdL), which represents the interests of Germans transferred from Czechoslovakia after World War II and their descendants. The 76th edition will take place in the Czech Republic for the first time.
Several citizens had already expressed their dissatisfaction with the Sudeten German conference at previous city assembly meetings. Today, dozens arrived to protest, some of them holding banners.
“On behalf of patriots, we call on you to distance yourselves from the Sudeten German congress,” said spokesperson Marie Vesela. “Citizens reject this provocation against our republic, which is definitely not the path to reconciliation.”
The speakers identified themselves as descendants of victims of the Nazis. “A Sudeten German sent the Gestapo to my grandfather and they tortured him to death,” said one of the protesters.
Cerny expressed understanding for the speakers’ position and arguments. “I am aware of the historical context, but neither the council nor the municipal assembly has invited the Sudeten Germans. This is a private event, and we cannot cancel or ban it,” he said.
In the past, the city approved multi-year subsidies for the Meeting Brno festival, but this support is not related to the conference.
Opposition assembly member Jiri Kment, from the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) proposed that the assembly reject the Brno conference and the March of Reconciliation from Pohorelice to Brno, but the motion did not receive sufficient support and was not included in the agenda.
After the war, about three million Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia. According to the Czech-German Commission of Historians, between 15,000 and 30,000 people lost their lives during this process. In the previous six years of the Nazi rule, around 320,000 to 350,000 inhabitants of the former Czechoslovakia perished.
The march, which commemorates the violent expulsion of the German-speaking population from Brno (known as the “Brno death march”), was first held in 2016, a year after Brno apologised for the post-war expulsion of German speakers.
After the meeting of the political parties’ groups today, Cerny said the city leadership would prepare a discussion item for the next meeting and take a position after a more detailed debate. He described this as a more responsible approach, but it met with loud disagreement from opponents of the conference.
Mayor Marketa Vankova (ODS) did not attend today’s meeting, but she said in January that the Meeting Brno association had long been seeking a relatively broad discussion on historical issues. “In no way do I perceive their representatives as wanting to question the horrors of war that took place during World War II in relation to the citizens of our state,” she said at the time.
At the end of October last year, around 150 people protested in Prague and Brno against the plan to hold the Sudeten German conference in the Czech Republic for the first time, which they described as an attempt to revise history.
SPD, currently a junior party in the coalition government, also opposes the congress. The party launched a petition at the beginning of this year, and will hold a protest rally on 28 April, followed by a memorial march for the victims of World War II on 24 May. According to SPD, the Sudeten German congress does not belong in Brno or anywhere else in the Czech Republic.
