Prerau massacre

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Memorial cross on the Švédské šance

At the Prerau massacre on 18./19. June 1945 near Prerau / Přerov 265 inmates of a refugee train at the Přerov marshalling yard were abducted by a Czechoslovak unit and killed at the Švédské šance (Swedish hill ) near Horní Moštěnice (Upper Moschtienitz).

history

Most of the 265 Carpathian Germans , Slovaks and Hungarians who were on the train at the Přerov marshalling yard near Lověšice on June 18, 1945, came from the Upper and Lower Zips . Shortly before the end of the war, they had been evacuated to Northern Bohemia and wanted to return to their homeland. While the train stopped, a military transport with Czechoslovak soldiers ran into the station in Přerov. The soldiers were on their way home from a victory ceremony in Prague .

In the afternoon, intelligence officer Karol Pazúr , a former member of the Hlinka Guard , and his soldiers forced the 265 civilians to leave the train. 30 of the soldiers were deployed to have the residents of Lověšice dig a mass grave 17 by 2 meters and a depth of two meters at the Schwedenschanze . On June 19, shortly after midnight, the refugees were taken away from the train station in rows of four. They had to strip down to their underwear, hand in their personal valuables, and were then killed with shots in the neck . In addition to the 71 men and 120 women, 74 children fell victim to this crime. "Children had to watch their mothers being liquidated, other children were murdered in front of their mothers." The youngest victim was an eight-month-old baby, the oldest victim an 80-year-old man. The soldiers then stole all of the returnee's valuables that were still on the train.

The places of origin of many Carpathian German victims are known. So came from:

When asked why he also had the children killed, Karol Pazúr later replied: “What should I do with them, since we shot their parents?” Against considerable political opposition, the military prosecutor Anton Rašlas had a criminal case against Pazúr opened. After two years of investigation, Pazúr was arrested and sentenced in January 1949 to 7 ½ years in prison by the military court in Bratislava . On appeal, the Supreme Military Court in Prague increased the sentence to 20 years in prison, but after two years Pazúr was released on presidential amnesty. From then on he was celebrated and honored as a hero of the resistance. Pazúr was the only perpetrator convicted for his involvement in the Prerau massacre, mainly because of his fascist past.

Commemoration

Since 1993 a memorial in Přerov has been commemorating this mass murder . In 2018, a cross made by the blacksmith Jiří Jurda was erected on the northern slope of the Švédské šance.

See also

literature

  • Persekuce. In: Tomáš Staněk : Persecution 1945. The position of the Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (outside the camps and prisons) (= book series of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe , Vol. 8). Extended and revised German language version of the 1st Czech edition, Böhlau, Vienna [u. a.] 2002, ISBN 3-205-99065-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims (Ed.): The expulsion of the German population from Czechoslovakia. dtv, Munich 1957. Vol. 1: p. 173; Vol. 2: S. 16 and 739.
    Wilhelm Turnwald: Documents for the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans . Aufstieg-Verlag, Munich 1951. pp. 228, 392 and 482.
  2. ^ A b c d Karl-Peter Schwarz: Crimes against displaced persons: The Prerau massacre. In: faz.net . June 15, 2015, accessed June 19, 2020 .
  3. ^ Ernst Hochberger: History: Introduction to the history of the Carpathian Germans in Slovakia. In: karpatendeutsche.de. July 2000, accessed June 19, 2020 .