Prague, Nov 12 (CTK) – A plaque commemorating the Czechs, Jews and anti-Nazi-minded Germans expelled from the Czechoslovak border areas after the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938 was unveiled yesterday at Prague´s Masaryk Railway Station where many of the expellees were arriving in autumn 1938.
Based on the Munich Agreement, which the German, Italian, British and French leaders signed on September 30, 1938, Czechoslovakia had to cede Sudetenland, or its border regions with a prevailing German population, to Hitler´s Germany.
The plaque was unveiled in the presence and under the aegis of Senate chairman Milan Stech (Social Democrats, CSSD).
According to statistics, about 370,000 people were expelled from the borderland at the time, but their real number was probably higher, Jaroslav Tesinsky, from the Centre of Czech History which organised the plaque unveiling yesterday, said.
About 300,000 of those expelled arrived at the Masaryk Station in Prague, being “refugees in their own homeland,” as Stech put it.
Tesinsky said the plaque reminds of a rather forgotten episode of history.
“The media often remember the fate of the German-speaking inhabitants of Czechoslovakia, who left for Germany for various reasons after the war (either they fled or were subject to the wild or officially organised transfer), while the stories of those expelled in 1938 from the borderland have mostly fallen into oblivion,” Tesinsky said.
More information about the late 1938 events are available onwww.utekyavyhnani1938.cz.
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