Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

had just been completed were deflected from their purpose and
sent to the Reich.
The vessels belonging to the Czechoslovak Danube Steam
Navigation Company (the majority of their shares belong to the
Czechoslovak State) were divided between the Reich and Hungary.
Valuable objects of art and furniture disappeared from public
buildings, without even an attempt at a legal justification of this
robbery; pictures, statues, tapestries were taken to Germany-the
Czech National Museum, the Modern Art Gallery, public and private .
collections were plundered.
The Reich German Commissar of the Czechoslovak National
Bank stopped all payments of monies abroad and seized all the
gold reserves and foreign bills in the Protectorate. Thus the Ger-
mans took 23,000 kilogrammes of gold to a nominal value of 737,000
million crowns (65,265,000) by transferring the gold deposited in the
Bank of International Settlement to the Reichsbank.
- Page 65 ­
(2) Economic Germanisation.
A. Rural Expropriation.
(aa) After Munich.
In the areas occupied by the German army at the beginning of
October 1938 Germany began to settle her nationals on all farms
whose Czech or Jewish occupants had fled for political or racial
reasons.
The Czechoslovak Land Reform Act of 1919, in so far as it
benefited Czech nationals, was declared invalid; Czech settlers were
expelled from their estates and compelled to relinquish their cattle,
agricultural implements and furniture.
On paper the Czech settlers were compensated; in fact they were
charged taxes and sums to cover the "deliberate damage" they were
said to have caused by escaping. These taxes and sums more than
balanced the compensation.
The big agricultural estates and State forests of the Czechoslovak
Republic became automatically Reich property and came under the
jurisdiction of the Reich Ministries concerned.
(bb) After Invasion of March 15th, 1939.
After the invasion German managers, supervis'ors and foremen
replaced the representatives of the Czechoslovak Republic in stateowned
plants.