Justice Minister Helena Válkova has apologized for insensitive statement relating to war events

Justice Minister Helena Válkova has apologized for making an insensitive statement relating to WWII events. In an interview for the news site Echo 24 Mrs. Válkova strongly condemned the post-war expulsion of 2.5 million Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia, saying that while the expulsion was in response to what had taken place before, nothing much had happened to Czechs under the protectorate. The statement sparked a storm of protests from opposition MPs. The center-right TOP 09 and the Civic Democrats said the words were an insult to the thousands of Jews who had suffered and died in concentration camps and a slight to the memory of the victims of Lidice and Ležáky, two villages raised to the ground by the Nazis. Mrs. Válkova explained in a statement that she had uttered the phrase as a comparison to what had happened in Poland or the former Soviet Union and said she should have expressed herself more clearly.