Leština massacre
The Leština massacre was a pogrom of German civilians in the Czechoslovak community of Leština on May 9, 1945, triggered by a German end- stage crime .
history
On May 7, 1945, a column of the Wehrmacht fleeing the Red Army drove through the village of Lesche in the Sudetenland and was shot at. A member of the Wehrmacht is said to have been killed. On the same day, a summoned unit of the Waffen-SS advanced to a punitive expedition in Lesche and abducted five male residents of the village. After being tortured, they were shot ten kilometers from their hometown in a meadow near Steinmetz .
After the end of the Second World War , the fate of the abducted people became known in Leština on May 9, 1945. Relatives drove to the place of execution and brought the bodies back to Leština for burial. They got into a pogrom mood and on the way back they killed a German road attendant with a spade. Subsequently, residents of Leština began a vengeance against Germans they knew in the surrounding villages. They fell u. a. into Vitošov, one and a half kilometers south-east, and murdered, mutilated and abducted members of the German ethnic group at random, mostly workers from the limestone quarries and the mechanical weaving mill F. Schmeiser. The mob train returned to Leština on the same day with 16 German prisoners. The residents of Leština then stoned and killed their victims and buried them in a field.
In May 2000, the victims of the pogrom were exhumed. The perpetrators were not brought to justice. The massacre was dealt with in the 2008 documentary Kde se valíkomy (Where the stones roll to).