Bavarian PM says more time and patience will heal wounds of the past

Addressing a meeting of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft on Sunday, Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer said more time and patience would be required to overcome the injustices of WWII. He said Bavaria was opening a representative office in Prague which pointed to above-standard relations and expressed the hope that more high-placed Czech government representatives would attend meetings of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft in the coming years. This year’s meeting heard calls, among others from Bavarian Social Affairs Minister Emilia Müller, for Prague to consider rescinding the Beneš decrees which sanctioned the post-war expulsion of 2.5 million Sudeten Germans from the border areas of Czechoslovakia. Ms. Müller said the decrees were unjust and have no place in the European legal order. The appeal was rejected by Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka who said that this painful chapter of Czech-German history had been addressed in the 1997 Czech-German declaration and the Czech government had no reason to question the validity of the decrees or reopen painful issues relating to WWII.