Deutsche Post Sudeten-Deutscher-Tag 1954

DEUTSCHE POST BERLIN and DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 5 June 1954 issued a special commemorative cover for "Sudeten-Deutscher-Tag 1954" (Sudeten German Day 1954). It was -- and still is -- an annual gathering of Sudeten Germans, an ethnic German population expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. These gatherings served to maintain the cultural heritage and identity of the Sudeten German community.

This particular cover featured several German stamps first issued in 1953, including aviator Otto Lilienthal (5 pfennig), poet Theodor Fontane (8 pfennig), inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler (10 pfenning) and a stamp celebrating the 500th anniversary of the  Gutenberg Bible (4 pfennig).

The postmark cancellation shows the Coat of Arms of Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, which originated from Munich, Germany. This perhaps was the result of many Sudeten Germans settling in Bavaria following WWII.

In the months directly following the end of World War II, when the Czechoslovak state was restored, the government expelled the majority of ethnic (Sudeten) Germans (about 3 million altogether), in the belief that their behaviour had been a major cause of the war and subsequent destruction.   Several thousand Germans were murdered during the expulsion, and many more died from hunger and illness as a consequence of becoming refugees.

Additionally, the regular transfer of ethnic nationals among nations, authorised according to the Potsdam Conference, proceeded from 25 January 1946 until October 1946. An estimated 1.6 million "ethnic Germans" (most of them also had Czech ancestors; and even Czechs, who spoke mainly German over the last years), were deported from Czechoslovakia to the American zone of what would become West Germany. An estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone (in what would become East Germany). Estimates of casualties related to this expulsion range between 20,000 and 200,000 people, depending on source. Casualties included primarily violent deaths and suicides, rapes, deaths in internment camps and natural causes.

Source: Wikipedia