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Time takes all... eventually. Add to that, man's violent nature which expedites natural losses. Therefore, what is not written down, taped, photographed, recorded or communicated from person to person, is lost ... forever.Our Chiba/Chyba ancestry records were never professionally recorded over the past 400 years. The 30 yr war(1618-1648)destroyed more than our material documents. Then, in the 20th century, surviving documents were compromised by the forced expulsions (post May 1945 ) of all Sudeten Germans from the Sudetenland. With the Reich's defeat our ancestral lands was forcibly "integrated" into a so-designated "Czech-Slovak" Republic (cf."Versailles Treaty", 1919). Spring 1945, with the westward withdrawal of Wehrmacht protection, the forced "expulsions" of some 3 1/2 million Germans & other non-Czech minorities began. These violent expulsions were the result of some 145 Benes Executive "decrees". We recall, the indifference to the fate of the Sudeten Germans by the victorious Allies (Russia, U.S., France & GB). Revenge was the order of the day! For the victors, the Czech unbridled revenge against Germans was "just" punishment - even when directed against civilians of all ages. After 6 yrs of war, with the Reich's capitulation +2 million German women, elderly women, young girls were raped, many repeatedly, by Stalin's Red Army - women & their children died horribly or committed suicide because of the personal ordeal and shame... In the Sudetenland, annexed by the new state Czech-Slovakia, the Benes executive "decrees" categorized German Jews, Reichsdeutsche, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, Rutherians, all non-Czechs, as deserters, war criminals, NS-sympathizers and/or traitors against the Czech-Slovak state. Age mattered not, e.g., 2 yrs old I became a German "traitor" to Czechoslovakia - to this day (2008) my status for the C.R. has not changed or been reconsidered -once a traitor, always one! All property, wealth of non-Czechs was (illegally) seized; capital, bank accounts, lands, houses, schools, churches, libraries ... all expropriated sans compensation - none to this very day - to the victors, the spoils, communism declared! Only problem: Czechs never collectively opposed the NS regime, not until it had fallen. Starting Spring 1945 non-Czechs were collectively gathered, stripped of their citizenship, of all belongings, documents & driven, like cattle, to waiting freight cars, chased like animals across the reconfigured Czech borders - in so doing, +10% of the Sudetenland civilian population perished at the hands of (Czech) extremists, partisans & rabid communists. Historians calculate +243,000 dead. We escaped with our lives, but all documents, photos, material memories, all memorabilia was lost or destroyed by the Czechs who seized our property. To date, not one single Czech national has been brought to trial for crimes against humanity, for these post-war atrocities against German civilians. As a result of the racist "Benes decrees" an 800-year political, cultural German presence in the Sudetenland was torn from the History Book of central Europe. It is to be noted that the Czech Republic's entry into the E.U (May 2004) left the 145 Benes "decrees" intact, still directed against expelled non-Czechs. These 145 racist "Benes Decrees" are today "legally part" of the E.U. legislation. Why? Well, Bruxelles lacks the nerve to order the Czech government to extirpate their racist remnants of the post-war communist Benes rule - weak knees are a universal ailment of mankind. Johann Anton Chiba (*), our father and his family, having lost everything began to retrace & re-record dates, names of our ancestry. Without his work this Chiba family tree from the Sudentenland could not be - homo homini lupus est.
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