At the centre of the dispute lie the post-war laws authorising the expulsion of around three million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after 1945
PRAGUE – A planned Sudeten German congress in the Czech city of Brno is reopening wartime wounds and triggering an unusually public clash between Czech and German far-right parties, usually close allies in Brussels.
The congress, scheduled for 21–25 May, will bring together representatives of the Sudeten Germans – the ethnic German population expelled from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War – for debates, memorial events and cultural programmes centred on post-war reconciliation.
Around 25,000 people in Czechia declared German ethnicity (including multiple identities) in the 2021 census, with only about 9,000 declaring it as their sole ethnicity. This tiny remnant (roughly 0.23% of the population) represents the descendants of the small number of Sudeten Germans who remained after the post-Second World War expulsions, plus some later returns or mixed-heritage individuals.
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