the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

Chapter VII The Transfer and its Legal Aspects
sentence to the members of
the Protectorate Government. (The most
severe sentences, those of life and twentyfive
years hard labour, were given to Adolf
Hrubý and Jan Jaroslav Krejčí, while
Rudolf Beran and Jan Syrový each got
twenty years hard labour.) The efforts of
the Communists to force a retrial, and
therefore stricter sentences for the
members of the Protectorate
Government, did not succeed. Among
the other accused who came before the
National Court were representatives of
Národní souručenství (National
Partnership, Vlajka, the Youth Education
Board, Czech Anti-Bolshevist League,
and also the industrialist Jan Baťa,
sentenced in absentia to fifteen years hard
labour. In the end eighteen people were
given the death sentence, among them
the representatives of Vlajka, Jan Rys-
Rozsévač, J. Burda, J. Čermák, and
O. Polívka, of Youth Education Board,
J. Svoboda and I. Chalupa (for both of
these the death sentences were commuted
to life sentences by Presidential
Clemency), K. Michaliček and F. Teuner,
and the son of Emanuel Moravec, Igor,
who was an SS officer. In a special trial,
exceptionally severe sentences were given
by the National Court to militant
journalists. Seven of those were sentenced
to the supreme penalty, among them
Vladimír Krychtálek, and Emanuel
Vajtauer, sentenced in absentia.
Retribution trials before special people’s
courts ended after several changes to the
original Presidential Decrees on May 4,
1947. Unfinished cases, of which there was
a very small percentage, were to be passed
on to the regular courts, who were to apply
the substantive law regulations of the
Major Retribution Decree. Other cases
which were reported after May 4, 1947,
were to be similarly dealt with. On May 29,
1947, the Minister of Justice, Prokop
Drtina, gave the National Assembly a final
report on the progress of retributions. In
Czech lands there were more than 132,000
criminal complaints (241,845 in total
throughout the entire Czechoslovak
Republic), and of those 38,316 ended up
as prosecutions. In total in the
Czechoslovak Republic 30,142 people
250
were sentenced, 778 to death and 741 to
life imprisonment. 24,673 persons were
given jail sentences by the special people’s
courts. In 802 cases the sentence was
suspended. According to Presidential
Decree No. 126/1945 Coll., the majority
of the retribution prisoners, in total
11,654, were assigned to forced labour
detachments.
Not only Drtina’s report, but also the
latest investigations into the activities of
the special people’s courts in Ostrava,
Opava, Litoměřice, Cheb and Liberec,
show that the majority of the criminals
from the German side who committed
less serious crimes were not sentenced at
all, or their sentence was suspended
because they became part of the transfer.
A great many criminals among them,
including the main leaders of the
repressive Nazi occupation regime, had
already fled Czechoslovak territory
before the end of the war.
In Slovakia the punishment of war
criminals and domestic collaborators was
carried out according to the directives of
the Slovak National Council. In this the
distinction was made between “Fascist
occupiers”, “domestic traitors”,
“collaborators”, and “offenders of the
Fascist regime”. The primary punishments
were the death sentence, confiscation of
property, and incarceration. Further it was
also possible, but only in cases of
“offenders of the Fascist regime”, to
sentence someone to loss of citizenship
rights and public chastisement. It was
possible to work off part of the prison
sentence in special work detachments.
Active participation in the Slovak
National Uprising was considered a
mitigating factor. The people’s courts
included the National Court sitting in
Bratislava, the Provincial People’s Court
sitting in provincial towns, and local
people’s courts sitting in each borough
which were to try the local activists of the
Hlinka Slovak People’s Party. Into the
competence of the National Court fell
decisions about the criminal acts of the
President of the war-time Slovak
Republic, members of Slovak
governments, Deputies of the Slovak
parliament, members of the Slovak