Land Gives Testimony Of War – an exhibition

One of the activities of the historical department of the Moravian Regional Museum involves the search and picking up of the remains of fallen soldiers from the period of the Second World War. The exhibition commemorates the fact that even seventy years on, skeletal remains of soldiers who died here at the very end of the war near can be found near Brno – not only German, who until 1990 were paid hardly any attention to, but surprisingly also Soviet and Romanian. The exhibition, focused on the findings of the past decade,  documents the results of a survey of a mass grave of Soviet soldiers on the Ruský vrch ("Russian Hill") in Brno-Komín, who died there in the last days of the war. The participation of the Romanian Royal Army was demonstrated by an incidental finding of the remnants of a Romanian soldier in the woods above Jinačovice. The only fallen American in the  Brno area was a pilot, Lieutenant William Kiggins, whose remnants, together with the wreckage of the Mustang P-51B aircraft, were found by workers of the museum in Brno-Slatina in 2007. The most significant recent discovery is represented by the finding of the remains of the biggest German tank champion, Master Sergeant Kurt Knispel, native from the Czech part of Silesia, who fought as a tank driver on all major fronts and died in South Moravia at the end of the war. Completely different is the story of five young German defectors, who in April 1945 in Těšany u Brna decided that they would no longer fight and die for Hitler. On the run, however, they were reported and arrested. A military field court sentenced them to death, even though the war was almost over by then. The five unfortunates had to dig their own grave behind the village at a stone cross, in which their remnants laid until being found in October 2014.