The deportation of the majority of the German population from liberated Czechoslovakia was being prepared by the government in exile during the war. “The point is that we should have a firm grip on several significant points in German territory from the very beginning. We must occupy them and it will be desirable to carry out terror so that as many Germans as possible escape. When transferring, I want the potential transfer to be also addressed from a social perspective. We would keep the workers and peasants, while we would get rid of the middle class, the bourgeoisie and the capitalists. It is necessary to combine the national revolution with the social revolution,” President Beneš wrote in August 1943.
After the end of the so-called wild deportation, which was accompanied by mass murders in Ústí nad Labem, a period of calmer and better organized ethnic cleansing began. The “systematic displacement” began at the end of January 1946 and lasted until November. In parallel with the ongoing deportations, the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) began registering “Germans of Jewish origin” for voluntary removal to the American occupation zone of Germany.
In September 1946, the Ministry of the Interior issued an order not to deport such persons. Those who were not deported were stuck in a country that refused to restore their citizenship, did not allow them to work, and reserved for them tickets for Germans in the rationing system, paradoxically corresponding to the German quotas for Jews. The negotiations involved the communist functionary of the Ministry of the Interior, Zdeněk Toman, known from the film of the same name, whose newly discovered letter you can read below.
In 1946, UNRRA promised to resolve the situation and had applicant questionnaires filled out, but nothing happened. Even after a year, many of the “Germans of Jewish origin” believed that if they were registered, they would not have to leave without furniture, clothing and bedding, as UNRRA had promised them. The reality of the deportations was different; in some places, the deportees were not even allowed to take their personal luggage. While the authorities used terms such as “half-Jew”, “quarter-Jew”, “Jewish half-breed” or “wife of a half-Jew”, the approximately 700 remaining “Germans of Jewish origin” organized themselves into committees according to their place of residence and turned to the free world for help.