Czech PM announces gesture toward "anti-fascist" Sudeten Germans

The prime minister of the Czech Republic, Jiri Paroubek, is planning to make a gesture of reconciliation towards Sudeten German antifascists. At a visit in the Austrian capital Vienna on Thursday, he is expected to announce compensation payments to those Sudeten Germans who fought against the Nazis and were nonetheless expelled from their homeland after the end of World War II. Some 2.5 million Sudeten Germans were sent from Czechoslovakia under the decrees issued by former Czechoslovak president Edward Benes. Paroubek said that before submitting any concrete proposal to the government, he wanted to discuss the form of the gesture with the coalition and opposition parties as well as his Slovak counterpart Mikulas Dzurinda in Budapest on Wednesday. Referring to Sudeten German anti-Nazi fighters, he named Social Democrats, Communists and Catholic priests as examples.