Beneš decrees

The Beneš decrees were a series of laws drafted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II. They were issued by President Edvard Beneš from 21 July 1940 to 27 October 1945 and retroactively ratified by the Interim National Assembly of Czechoslovakia on 6 March 1946.

The decrees dealt with various aspects of the restoration of Czechoslovakia and its legal system, denazification, and reconstruction of the country. In journalism and political history, the term "Beneš decrees" refers to the decrees of the president and the ordinances of the Slovak National Council (SNR) concerning the status of ethnic Germans, Hungarians and others in postwar Czechoslovakia and represented Czechoslovakia's legal framework for the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia.

The decrees treated German and Hungarian citizens as collective criminals, enforcing racial segregation and disenfranchisement. As a result, almost all ethnic Germans and Hungarians, some of whom had ancestors who had lived in Czechoslovakia for centuries prior to World War II, or those who had settled there during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, lost their Czechoslovak citizenship and property. The state then expelled them from their homes. Some of them died during the expulsion process which took place during the late 1940s. The Beneš decrees were enforced differently in different parts of the country with some decrees being valid only in Bohemia and Moravia, while the SNR's ordinances were enforced in Slovakia.

The decrees also allowed Hungarian civil servants to be dismissed, health care to be withdrawn, the use of the Hungarian language in public offices and church services to be banned, Hungarian students to be excluded from universities, Hungarian cultural and social associations to be dissolved, the publication of books and newspapers in Hungarian to be banned, and ethnic Hungarians were not even to be allowed to start civil procedures. Anyone who had documents proving their Slavic nationality was rewarded with the option to move into the confiscated houses.

The decrees remain politically controversial in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They were never repealed and are still used to confiscate property from Hungarians in Slovakia on the grounds that their ancestors should have lost their property.