For the first time, the Sudeten German Association, uniting descendants of those expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II, will gather in Brno, the second-largest city in modern-day Czech Republic. They were invited by the cultural festival Meeting Brno for part of its multiday program in late May. Both entities will discuss reconciliation and commemorate the victims of the Shoah.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is expected to come, too. The gathering is titled “All Life Is Meeting.”
A reconciliation Mass will be celebrated at the Brno Exhibition Centre as part of the gathering.
Ulrike Scharf, Bavarian state minister for family, labor, and social affairs, told EWTN News that the event “shows that we are reconciled, that we have become friends.”
Scharf, whose agenda includes Sudeten Germans in Bavaria, stressed that reconciliation is “the essence of Europe.” In this “wonderful” European community, “it is crucial that we meet in friendship,” the politician explained.
Yet the decision created a polemic in Czechia, with public figures weighing in and a series of protests, one of which was attended by the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Tomio Okamura. Rather than reconciliation, they see the gathering as a provocation and relativization of history.
The critique came also from Miloš Zeman and Václav Klaus, who served as presidents as well as prime ministers of Czechia. “We have nothing to reconcile with the Germans,” Klaus said, clarifying that he does “not feel not reconciled” with them.
“We did not trigger two world wars” and “are not the cause of tens of millions of victims” of World War II, Klaus explained, arguing that as prime minister in 1997, he signed, together with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the Czech-German Declaration on Mutual Relations and Their Future Development.
Wounds that remain
However, the bishop of Brno, Pavel Konzbul, welcomed “every initiative that leads to the meeting of people, to dialogue, and to overcoming historical injustices,” he underscored for EWTN News.
“Reconciliation between nations and individuals,” the prelate continued, “does not happen by denying or simplifying the past but by “talking about it truthfully and with respect.”
Thus, he sees “the presence of the descendants of the Sudeten Germans” in his diocese “primarily as an opportunity for such a meeting,” provided “it takes place in a spirit of respect, without mutual accusations or spreading false slander, and with openness to the other.”
The local bishop appealed to participants, residents, and critics to act with “calm, respect, and to a willingness to look for what can unite us.”
Only “such attitudes are the basis of true and lasting peace,” the bishop underlined.
When the new archbishop of Prague, Stanislav Přibyl, was the bishop of Litoměřice a few months ago, he proclaimed 2026 a Year of Reconciliation to address wounds that remain from World War II and its aftermath.
Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland, the majority-German region in Czechoslovakia, in 1938 and later established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the country. Following Germanyʼs defeat, Czechoslovakia expelled approximately 3 million ethnic Germans.
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