The Benes Decrees refer to a series of presidential decrees issued by Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes following the Second World War, aimed at renewing the "constitutional order" of Czechoslovakia. The decrees are most infamous for stripping all ethnic Germans and Hungarians of their citizenship (Decree 33/1945) and forcing over 2.5 million of them out of the country even though their ancestors had lived there for centuries. The official expulsion took place in three waves and thousands were killed in the process. Decree 71/1945 then introduced work obligations for those who remained, which meant that over 40,000 Hungarians were brought from southern Slovakia and forced to labour on Czech lands.

The Benes Decrees remain controversial to this day and have in recent months resulted in strained relations between the Czech Republic and Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Some politicians have even suggested that the Czech Republic should not be admitted to the European Union in 2004 as planned unless the decrees are repealed, though most have stated that they should not be an obstacle to the country's accession.

A Carpathian German perspective on the Benes Decrees:

http://www.geocities.com/ycrtmr/benesch.htm

This page provides an overview of the decrees, eyewitness accounts, and related news over the last few years. In their view:

Not only were the Benes-decrees odious at the time. Their continued lawfulness in the Czech and Slovak republics continue to have effects on survivors. They prevent them from living in their old homeland as legal natives (which they are, after all), get restitution for their loss of property, etc., just as other individuals who suffered from ethnic discrimination during World War II do.

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintains a website offering its side of the debate here:

http://www.mfa.cz/decrees/

It concludes:

The decrees dating from 1940-45 are historical acts, which for their most part lack any significance today. They reflect the continuity of Czechoslovakia's legal status during the period of its struggle against Nazism and form a part of a complex of wartime and post-war events and approaches. On the bilateral, Czech-German level, this question was resolved by way of the Czech-German Declaration adopted in 1997 (text in English, Czech, German), in which both parties agreed that they would not burden their relations with legal and political problems of the past. The so-called punitive approach to Germany does not constitute a specific Czech problem, but is rather a matter to be considered in a broader context, which thus far has not been discussed on the international level. It is questionable to what extent the reopening of these matters (furthermore, at a time when the legal and material wounds suffered by the victims of the Nazi aggression have not yet fully healed) would contribute to peace and understanding in Europe. At present, a discussion of those decrees lacks any legal significance or meaning; it can be nothing more than a historical debate. Such a "screening" of the history of individual candidate states for membership in the EU seems quite unprecedented (in such case, the number of its member states would be much smaller).

All 58 decrees can be found at the following URL, hosted by the Parliament of the Czech Republic:

http://www.psp.cz/cgi-bin/eng/docs/laws/dek/Index.html

Unfortunately, all the documents are in Czech and I have been unable to find a complete English translation.