Annual pilgrimage commemorates victims of 1945 Brno death march

Some 150 people took part in the annual Pilgrimage of Reconciliation fromthe town of Pohořelice to Brno commemorating the victims of the post-war expulsion of local German-speaking population on Saturday.

The 30-kilometer route follows the one that the ethnic Germans must have taken but symbolically goes in the opposite direction. The event, which is is part of a festival entitled Meeting Brno, willculminate with a commemorative meeting in the Old Brno monastery.

Some 20,000 German-speaking inhabitants of Brno were forced to leave the city on May 31, 1945, and walk to the Austrian border. Around 1,700 are believed to have died of exhaustion on the way.