While some Germans were later allowed to return to Brno, hundreds of others fell victim to diseases, rape, torture and malnutrition in the following weeks.
[4][5] After six years of German occupation the city of Brno, capital of the Czechoslovak province of Moravia, was liberated on 26 April 1945 by the Soviet and Romanian armies of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, in the context of the Bratislava–Brno Offensive.
Shortly afterwards, the Germans were marked with white armbands and became subject to similar restrictions to those previously directed against the Jews by the Nazis.
[6] Soon after the war ended, the Czechoslovak government incited the expulsion of its large ethnic German minority from the country.
[7] During May 1945 the Národní výbor several times discussed the need to punish Nazi war criminals, their Czech collaborators and the general situation of Germans in the city.
On the morning of 30 May the representatives of a large firearms factory in Brno urged the police director to carry out this order immediately.
As the Pohořelice camp had been abandoned more than a month before, there was no opportunity to provide proper housing, food and health care for thousands of people.
About 1,000 expellees were accommodated by families of surrounding villages, and 1,807 mostly elderly people were relocated to the former Institute for Juvenile[clarification needed] in Mušlov next to Mikulov.
Emilia Hrabovec was unable to substantiate these charges, but instead, according to her research, old people and tired young children had been sent away on trucks under supervision of Czechoslovak guards.
[9] In 1995 Czech writer Ludvík Vaculík filed criminal charge for the crime of genocide related to the event of expulsion of Germans from Brno.
In 2015 the council of Brno officially regretted the harm on the victims of the death march and organized a "Pilgrimage of Reconciliation" along the route.
[15][16] In 2002, a joint commission of German and Czech historians collected evidence and published the results in a book titled Rozumět dějinám ("Understanding History").
On the 70th anniversary of the event in 2015 the march was supported by the city of Brno and the number of participants was about 300, including some representatives of Sudeten German organisations.