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Notes
This article has benefited greatly from critical readings by Jennifer Scanlon, Basia Nowak, Jane Wickersham, Ben St. John and the anonymous readers for Nationalities Papers. Funding for this project was provided by the ASPERA foundation and Indiana University's Russian and East European Institute.
1. Interview with Sofia Magyari, July 2001.
2. For the purposes of this study, I follow Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff's definition of ethnic Germans as “people whose ancestors emigrated from the German heartlands and who have retained some affinity with German language and culture, as well as descendants of people who assimilated German culture and language during periods of German rule of territories that are now integral parts of nation-states other than Germany.” See Cordell and Wolff, “Germany as Kin-State,” 23. Although sources vary, it is estimated that anywhere from 80,000–90,000 ethnic Germans were deported from Romania to the Soviet Union between 1945–1950, of which roughly 15% perished during deportation. For figures see Schieder and Conze, Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, 80; Weber et al., “Die Deportation von Siebenburger Sachsen in die Sowjetunion 1945–1949,” 72; Radosav, Donbas; and Trzcielinska-Polus, “The Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany towards German Minorities in East European Countries, with Poland as an Example,” 73.
3. Although figures vary, it is estimated that anywhere between 12 and 15 million Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II: approximately 7 million from Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, 3 million from Czechoslovakia, approximately 2 million from Poland and the USSR, and 2.7 million from Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary collectively. Of those expelled, 2 million died while in flight. See Judt, “The Past is Another Country,” 297. For additional figures see de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge; Prauser and Rees, “Introduction,” 8; and Ziemer, Deutscher Exodus.
4. Over the past decade, however, the ethnic German population in Romania has become a subject of historical inquiry by a number of scholars in Romania and Germany. See, for example, Radosav, Donbas; Vultur, Germanii din Banat; and idem, Istorie Traita–Istorie Povestita. Additionally, Archivele Totalitarismului and Annale Sigheţ, Romanian journals devoted to documenting persecutions under communist rule, have begun chronicling the persecution of ethnic Germans. Finally, German organizations in Romania and Germany have published scholarship and memoirs written by former deportees. See, in particular, Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren; Plajer, Lebenszeit und Lebensnot; Roman and Hofbauer, Transilvanian Siebenburgen; and Roth, Kleine Geschichte Siebenburgens. Although crucial for documenting and analyzing the experiences of ethnic Germans in Romania, these works constitute a specialized—and one might argue marginalized—area of study as they have yet to be integrated into more general histories of Romania (including school textbooks) and, in particular, of World War II and the early communist period.
5. Although Ioan Scurta and Gheorghe Buzatu in their history of twentieth-century Romania briefly explain the legislative aspects surrounding the deportation of the ethnic Germans, in Dinu Giurescu's book on Romania in World War II, which includes a discussion of Yalta and the immediate postwar period, the deportees do not even appear as a footnote. See Scurtu and Buzatu, Istoria românilor în secolul XX; and Giurescu, România în al doilea război mondial.
6. The ethnic German population in Romania consists of two different groups of Germans: the Schwabians (originally from the region in southwestern Germany known as Baden-Württemberg) who, for the most part, reside in Western Romania in the Banat region, and the Saxons (originally from central and northeastern Germany) who reside in Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia (northeastern Romania). According to the 1930 census, the ethnic German population constituted 4.1% of the population (745,421 people out of a population of 18 million). See Wien, “The Germans in Romania,” 60. As of 2002, the ethnic composition of the Romanian population was as follows: 89.5% Romanian, 6.6% Hungarian, 2.5% Roma, 0.3% German and 0.3% Ukrainian. See Census of 2002, < http://www.clubafaceri.ro/info_articole/articol/1294> (accessed 3 November 2006).
7. On the whole, school textbooks in Romania function to preserve and enshrine the collective memory of ethnic Romanians. For instance, the deportation of ethnic Germans and other minorities is mentioned briefly (in a side-bar) in Sorin and Ochescu, Istorie, Manual pentru clasa a VIII-a. For a good discussion of the treatment of minorities in Romanian school textbooks see Murgescu “The History of the Minorities in the Romanian School System, Curriculum and Textbooks in the Late 1990s.”
8. For an exemplary work on the complexities surrounding resistance, collaboration, and retributive justice in post-war Europe see Deak et al., The Politics of Retribution in Europe.
9. For an analysis of these issues with regard to the Holocaust in Germany and Poland, respectively, see Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders; and Gross, Neighbors.
10. See, for example, Gross, Revolution from Abroad; de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge; Benz, Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten; Naimark, Fires of Hatred; Rieber, Forced Migration in Eastern and Central Europe, 1939–1950; Frommer, National Cleansing; Nitschke, Vertreibung und Aussiedlung der deutschen Bevolkerung aus Polen 1945 bis 1949; and Deak et al., The Politics of Retribution; Ther and Siljak, Redrawing Nations; and Koch, Deutsche Aussiedler aus Rumänien.
11. See Jolluck, Exile and Identity. Although not his primary focus, Benjamin Frommer also examines the gendered dimensions of Czechoslovak expulsion policies, especially as they affected inter-ethnic marriages in postwar Czechoslovakia, in his recent work National Cleansing.
12. Scholars have recently begun to synthesize women's memoirs of the Gulag within the broader narrative of communist persecutions, expulsions, and deportations. For scholarship on women in the Gulag in the Soviet Union see Pratt, “Angels in the Stalinist House; Sherbakova, “The Gulag in Memory”; and Massino, “Humanizing Imprisonment.” In addition, Shapovalov, Remembering the Darkness; and Vilensky, Till my Tale is Told are invaluable for understanding women's experiences of life in the Gulag as told from the perspective of former women prisoners.
13. Pioneering work on women and the Holocaust include, Laska, Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust; Rittner and Roth, Different Voices; Baumel, Double Jeopardy; and Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust. On gender, memory, and the representation of the Holocaust see Horowitz, “Gender and Holocaust Representation”; Ringelheim, “Genocide and Gender”; Reading, The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust; and Hirsch and Smith, “Feminism and Cultural Memory.”
14. This is not to equate the experiences of the ethnic German women under investigation with women concentration and extermination camp inmates or to normalize the Holocaust by comparing it with postwar persecutions, but rather to stress that in both cases the way in which women interpreted and responded to internment was often gendered. For example, maintaining good hygiene, sewing, and forming close bonds with other female inmates were important survival strategies for both the ethnic German deportees and concentration camp inmates.
15. While adopting Joan Scott's definition of gender as a “constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes,” at the same time I acknowledge that gender was a non-existent category in Europe in the 1940s and thus notions about women's and men's proper roles and behaviors—as both represented in discourse and lived on an everyday level—were perceived as natural and rooted in ideas about biological difference. On the use of gender as a lens for historical analysis see Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 42.
16. For women and gender roles in interwar Romania see Mihăilescu, Din istoria feminismul Românesc; and Kilgman, The Wedding of the Dead.
17. See Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, 44, 55. Although writing about Third World women, Sandoval's theorization of gender as a strategy of resistance and empowerment that can be used in different locations and situations for different purposes is applicable to the subjects under investigation since their ability to perform varying gender roles contributed to their ultimate survival.
18. All of my subjects identified as Protestants.
19. The respondents were selected through word of mouth and an oral history database at the University of Transylvania in Braşov. Although guided by a questionnaire that included roughly 60 open-ended questions dealing with a wide range of issues including childhood, education, work, marriage, family relations, sexuality, leisure, politics, ethnic relations and the post-communist transition, I began each interview with a general question about childhood and family and simply let the subjects narrate their lives. If the subject did not address topics on the questionnaire, I asked about them during relevant parts of the interview or when the subject had finished talking about a particular aspect of her life.
20. On the uses of oral history for understanding subjective identities under totalitarianism see Passerini and Lydesdorff, Memory and Totalitarianism; and Watson, Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism. For more general scholarship on oral history and agency see Thompson, The Voice of the Past; and Berger and Patai, Women's Words. For history and everyday life see Lüdtke, The History of Everyday Life.
21. See Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 45; and Bos, “Women and the Holocaust.”
22. Interview with Maria Cocârlă, July 2001.
23. General V. P. Vinogradov, Soviet head of the Allied Control Commission, presented the order to the Romanian government in note no. 031. Following the termination of hostilities, Allied Control Commissions (ACC)—which consisted of representatives of the major Allied powers—were set up to manage the policies of the defeated countries. As a result of the Soviet military presence in the country, the Soviet Union dominated the Allied Control Commission in Romania, playing a leading role in executing (and interpreting) the policies outlined in the Armistice Agreement with Romania of 12 September 1944.
24. Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 4.
25. Baier, Deportarea Etnicilor germani din România în Uniunea Sovietica, 7.
26. Ibid., 14.
27. Ibid.
28. Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien, 13 January 1995.
29. Article 10 of the Armistice Agreement with Romania of 12 September 1944 stated that: “The Rumanian Government must make regular payments in Rumanian currency required by the Allied (Soviet) High Command for the fulfillment of its functions and will in case of need ensure the use, on Rumanian territory, of industrial and transportation enterprises, means of communication, power stations, enterprises and installations of public utility, stores of fuel, oil, food and other materials, and services in accordance with instructions issued by the Allied (Soviet) High Command.” See the Armistice Agreement with Rumania; 12 September 1944, the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, < http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/rumania.htm > (accessed May 2006) Radosav, Donbas, 15; and Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 43.
30. See the note of Prime Minister Nicolae Rădescu to General Vinogradov, 13 January 1945, in Baier, Deportarea Etnicilor germani din România, 51.
31. Radosav, Donbas, 15
32. For instance, on 6 March 1945, Stalin installed Petru Groza (leader of the Ploughman's Front) as the new leader of the Romanian government—an appointment the US refused to recognize. In addition, on 9 March 1945, Stalin bypassed diplomatic channels by unilaterally granting the Groza government permission to administer northern Transylvania, which previously had been under Hungarian administration. See Rothschild and Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 107–08; and Hager, “Deportarea Şvabilor Satmareni in URSS,” 426.
33. Deportations began in January 1945; Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 52. The Nürnberg trials were held from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946.
34. Baier, Deportarea Etnicilor Germani din Romania, 14.
35. Dimitru Sandru, “Etnicii germani si detaşamenţele de munca¸ fort¸atǎ din Romǎnia, 1944–1946,” 26.
36. Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 17–18.
37. Hager “Deportarea Şvabilor Satmareni in URSS,” 428.
38. All told, the total number of individuals throughout Eastern Europe deported to the Soviet Union for forced labor after the war reached, at a bare minimum, 350,000, though many claim the figure was well over 500,000. See Baier, “Sigheţ”; Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 51; Weber et al., Die Deportierten von Siebenburgen, 72.
39. While the deportation of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe was part of the larger effort to punish this population for its support of and collaboration with the Nazis and also to create ethnically homogeneous states—particularly in the case of Czechoslovakia and Poland—it is important to distinguish between migration, forced migration and expulsions, population transfers and deportation. In contrast to Czechoslovakia and Poland, for example, where populations were forcibly expelled (forced migration) according to agreements made at Potsdam, in Romania the ethnic Germans were deported on the basis of Soviet policy alone to be used in the USSR for the purpose of forced labor (hence the reference “reparation deportees”). Of those that survived deportation, one-half returned to Romania.
40. Although ethnic cleansing is also a form of retribution, a distinction between the two serves to clarify why East European governments followed different policies with regard to the treatment of ethnic German populations in the postwar period. As Norman Naimark has asserted, ethnic cleansing is a deliberate policy designed to remove a population in order to create a modern, ethnically homogeneous state; although such was the intent in Poland and Czechoslovakia it was not so, at least not explicitly, in Romania. In addition, because both Poland and Czechoslovakia were occupied by the Nazis and some of the worst atrocities occurred on Polish, and to a lesser extent Czech, soil, the expulsion and forced migration of ethnic Germans was also a form of retribution. In the Romanian case, by contrast, a motivating factor was the fulfillment of Soviet demands, namely the rebuilding of Soviet industries destroyed by the Germans during the war. Although support of or tolerance for the deportations may have been rooted in the need to punish the ethnic Germans for their supposed collaboration with the Nazis, in Romania retribution did not fundamentally guide Romanian or Soviet policy.
41. See n. 2.
42. Many former deportees corroborate this claim; see Radosav, 28–30; the interview with Margareta Ebner in Vultur, Germanii din Banat, 344; and Oberten, “Mein fingerglied verfaulte,” 8–9.
43. See order no. 5.551 din 11 ianuarie, 1945 (11 January 1945).
44. See Baier, Deportarea Etnicilor for letters protesting the deportation of Romanians and other ethnic minorities to the USSR.
45. German organizations in Romania and retreating SS soldiers organized the evacuation of some 100,000 ethnic Germans westward toward Austria and Germany; Wien, “The Germans in Romania,” 65.
46. Martin Hutter, “Pferde and Hundefleisch gegessen,” 46.
47. The “communiqué for citizens of ethnic-German origin” in which the deportation ordinance was outlined did not appear in Drum Nou until 14 January 1945 (8) after the deportations had already begun in Braşov. Interview with Hilde Stoinescu, July 2003.
48. Interview with Iosefina Hruşca, July 2001. Because Braşov was the first place the deportations occurred and because the deportation ordinance did not appear in the city's newspaper, Drum Nou, until after they had begun, many Brasovians were unprepared. For the deportation ordinance see Drum Nou, 14 January 1945, 8.
49. Erzosi and Reschitza, “Die Geschichte einer Familie,” 27.
50. Interview with Maria Cocârlă, July 2001.
51. Ditzig-Scahndern, “Sie weinten bald ohn Trannen,” 159–56.
52. In her study of Biniţi, Katherine Verdery found that Romanians appreciated the efforts of ethnic Germans in the modernization of the economy (particularly farming and industry) and in establishing cultural institutions and organizations. In fact, many Romanians respected Germans for their strong work ethic and imitated German fashions and social practices in the hope of advancing socially. At the same time, Romanians resented the demands placed on them by their German employers and, more generally, ethnic German dominance in business and culture. See Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers.
53. In Romania, as in other countries in Eastern Europe that were satellites of or allied with the Nazis, ethnic Germans were officially declared citizens of the German Reich. Moreover, in Romania, after the Second Vienna Award (August 1940), ethnic Germans were granted corporate status, and beginning in November 1940, could issue their own laws. Wien, “The Germans in Romania,” 62.
54. During the interwar period the state privileged ethnic Romanians over other minority populations, most evident in the Romanianization of the bureaucracy and educational system; however, the ethnic German minority had permanent representation in the national parliament (holding 4–10 seats during this period). Although some Germans may have embraced a more protective or exclusionary form of nationalism in response to Romanianization, this did not necessarily or automatically translate into a genuine belief in or loyalty to Nazi ideology. Ibid, 61–63.
55. Ibid., 63.
56. Milata, Zwischen Hitler, Stalin, und Antonescu.
57. Children between the ages of 2 and 15 were typically not deported and thus were either cared for by relatives, friends, or neighbors, or placed in orphanages. See Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, especially the section entitled “Flight from Romania”; and Radosav, Donbas.
58. Those who recognized that they would be deported typically packed warm clothing and food, which they often shared with other deportees.
59. See Jolluck, Exile and Identity.
60. Interview with Sofia Magyari, July 2001. These sentiments were echoed by other women I interviewed.
61. See Jolluck, Exile and Identity, 18; Massino, “Humanizing Imprisonment”; and Lentin, “Femina sacra,” 469, for a discussion of the anxiety and shame associated with the bodily incursions that women faced during deportation and internment.
62. Interview with Regine Şimon, summer 2001.
63. Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 49–50. During the period under investigation, the two main cities in the Donbass region were Gorlovka and Nikitovka—after which two of the major camps were named. Other camps in the region included Iunkov, Cistekova, and Konstantinovka.
64. Interview with Maria Cocârlă, July 2001.
65. Ibid.
66. Baumel, “Women's Agency and Survival Strategies during the Holocaust,” 342.
67. On celebrating holidays in the camps, see the stories in Ich Weiss dass du Mein Vater Bist, Aber ich kenne dich nicht—Erzahlungen von Russland Deportierten, 63.
68. Work was conducted by teams designed like battalions or brigades with a particular hierarchy of individuals divided according to level of fluency in Russian. Radosav, Donbas, 41.
69. Interview with Iosefina Hruşca, July 2001.
70. Ibid.
71. While Iosefina's bread ration was reduced as a result of her work reassignment, by working in the garden she could pocket some of the vegetables she planted and thereby diversify her diet—as well as those of her roommates.
72. See Radosav, Donbas.
73. In this respect the situation of those deported to the USSR for forced labor differed from women in Nazi concentration camps in which work was sex-segregated, though women still engaged in heavy labor. See Baumel, “Women's Agency and Survival Strategies,” 339.
74. Jolluck also notes that the sight of Polish women engaging in heavy labor was shocking for men, since they were accustomed to women engaging in domestic duties and lighter labor and believed women to be physically unfit for such arduous work. See Jolluck, Exile and Identity, 46–67.
75. In exchange for facing such life-threatening situations mine workers received the highest rations and/or remunerations. Thus, whereas those working underground in the mines would receive anywhere from 800 to 1,200 grams of bread a day, those working outside the mines and in other capacities received only 300–500 grams per day. See Radosav, Donbas, 43.
76. Interview with Maria Cocârlă, July 2001. The term Stakhanovite refers to Andrei Stakhanov, a coal miner who became famous in the USSR in the 1930s by superseding his coal shoveling quota by 1,400%. Though assisted by coworkers, Stakhanov became the symbol of the heroic Soviet worker and served as the standard by which other laborers were measured. For a good discussion on the effects of Stakhanovism upon worker identity and everyday working conditions in the Soviet Union see Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 208–14, and Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1944.
77. Interview with Hilde Stoinescu, July 2003.
78. Interview with Sofia Magyari, July 2001. In addition to larger rations, mine workers were granted monetary and additional clothing allotments.
79. Weber et al., Die Deportierten, 460.
80. Thus, whereas those working underground in the mines would receive anywhere from 800 to 1,200 grams of bread a day, those who worked in the kitchens, farms, or hospitals received only 300–500 grams per day.
81. Whereas 12.9% of all female deportees from Braşov died in the USSR, nearly double the number of men (22.9%) died. Weber et al., Die Deportierten, 238, 303. On the whole, 3,076 individuals died while in the USSR, three quarters of them being male. In part, this can be explained by the fact that the majority of female deportees were between the ages of 17 and 23, while the majority of male deportees were between the ages of 39 and 45. However, certainly many of these men were in good health and more suited to heavy labor than women, so age was not a definitive factor in ensuring survival.
82. Fischer, “Unsere Knochen lassen wir nicht hier!,” 44.
83. Jolluck has noted that maintaining good hygiene was also a form of resistance; a means of keeping “the enemy from invading and eroding private space … and preserving the individual's relationship to her body and self.” See Jolluck, Exile and Identity; and Massino, “Humanizing Imprisonment.” This was similarly the case for women concentration camp inmates.
84. Some men were able to earn extra rations by stealing firewood and selling it to the Russians, but this was a much more dangerous enterprise than knitting or sewing.
85. Men's entitlement to food, particularly men who work outside and provide materially for the home, is not just a European but global phenomenon. Hanna Papanek claims that because women have been historically considered subordinate to males—particularly the male breadwinner—and are typically expected to exercise constraint in the face of food, women are more accustomed to sacrificing their needs, desires, and cravings, allowing them to endure psychologically on fewer rations. See Papanek, “To Each Less than She Needs, From Each More than She Can Do,” 173.
86. The anxiety produced by such public nudity was a topic that many women concentration camp inmates spoke of as well—indeed, this is something they single out. Hutton, Testimony from the Nazi Camps, 123–25.
87. Frau B. from Georg Weber et al., Die Deportierten, 428.
88. Interview with A. T., summer 2003.
89. On the Holocaust and gendered violence see Joan Ringelbaum, “Genocide and Gender,” 18–33.
90. Russland Deportierten, 14; Jolluck, Exile and Identity; and my conversations with the former deportees. There is no reason to assume that these searches were exceptional, however, for during times of crisis and war women often become sexual victims of the occupiers and invaders.
91. Valentina Levleva-Pavlenko, in a piece tellingly called “Unedited Life,” admits to using her sexuality to survive the camps.
92. See Tröger, “Between Rape and Prostitution,” 97–115. None of my respondents spoke of brothels in the camp.
93. On sexual relations and sexual abuse in the concentration camp context see Hutton, Testimony from the Nazi Camps, Chap. 3.
94. On women's silence surrounding bodily transgressions and sexual assault during periods of war and crisis see Seifert, “War and Rape.”
95. Radosav, Donbas, 64. Some of those who were shipped via East Germany stayed there or fled to the West, thereby escaping the communist system altogether.
96. Of the 80,000–90,000 ethnic Germans deported from Romania to the USSR, 10,000 died and roughly 45,000 returned to Romania. The remainder settled in either the German Federal Republic or Austria. Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, 80; Wien, “The Germans in Romania,” 65.
97. Interview with Sofia Magyari, July 2001.
98. Baier, “Sighet,” 436; Radosav, Donbas, 66.
99. In addition to the persecution of 80,000 peasants and thousands of other enemies of the state, in 1951 40,000 Schwabians from the Banat region (western Romania) were sent to Bǎrǎgan in southeastern Romania for forced labor. Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, 112. Smaranda Vultur powerfully recaptures the experiences of those who returned to the Banat in her book Istorie Traita.
100. Baier, “Sigheţ,” 436.
101. Since ethnic Germans had historically engaged in business and commerce—as well as agriculture—they were automatically dubbed bourgeois capitalists and class enemies by the communist government. Kroner, Vor 50 Jahren, 56.
102. Maria and other deportees were forced to put “studying in Russia” on job applications to justify these “periods of unemployment.” Interview with Maria Cocârlă, July 2001.
103. Regine married before she was deported; Magyari did not have children.
104. Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers, 38.
105. None of the women I interviewed had left children behind.
106. In 1967 Romania reestablished diplomatic relations with West Germany and by 1978 some 80,000 ethnic Germans had immigrated to West Germany. In 1978 the two governments negotiated an agreement whereby the Romanian government agreed to allow 11,000–13,000 ethnic Germans to emigrate to West Germany each year in exchange for a payment of 5,000 DM per person—though Ceauşescu managed to get as much as 15,000 DM for some individuals. Between 1978 and 1988, approximately 120,000 Germans emigrated, leaving behind a population of approximately 200,000 ethnic Germans in Romania.
107. As of 2003, deportees received 300,000 lei (around $10) per month for every year they were deported. See Decret-Lege no. 118, din 30 martie, 1990.
108. In an attempt to “eliminate a potential source of nationality conflict,” the victors at Potsdam agreed that Germans living in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were to be resettled—the effects of which resulted in the expulsion of nearly 6 million people from these three countries combined.
109. The case of postwar Czechoslovakia is illustrative in this respect. While most ethnic Germans and Hungarians from this region were spared the horrible fate of deportation to the USSR for forced labor, at the close of the war, returning Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš approved their “transfer” to “native” countries. Indeed, by 1938 (following the Munich Agreement) Beneš had formulated an anti-minority theory, which entailed the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans (and later the expulsion of the Hungarians) in order to create a homogeneous Slav nation-state. As a unilateral, Czech-inspired policy, these expulsions—in particular those of the Sudeten Germans—was greeted with fervent approval by many Czechs, though the Slovaks did not seem averse to the removal of ethnic Hungarians from their region of the country either. The fact that this was a voluntary move on the part of a democratic leader—rather than a communist directive—challenges the notion of the benign non-communist leader struggling against an oppressive and all-powerful Soviet monolith. See Janics, Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, 5.
110. Ibid., 3. See also Frommer, National Cleansing, for a discussion of how the treatment of ethnic Germans by the Czechoslovak government differed from that of the ethnic Hungarians.
111. In August 1945, Edvard Beneš used Decree No. 33/1945/sb to strip Germans and Magyars of Czech citizenship.
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