Turning Point and Collapse: Expulsion of the Population and the Destruction of Centuries-Old Bonds
The centuries-long continuity of Babiny I began to collapse during the dark period of the late 1930s. The deepening economic crisis and the massive rise of nationalism, fuelled by the Henlein movement, also affected these remote mountain areas (Severní Polabí, undated; Mistopisy.cz, undated). After the signing of the Munich Agreement in the autumn of 1938, the Sudetenland, including Babiny, was detached from Czechoslovakia and incorporated into the structures of Nazi Germany (Severní Polabí, undated; Mistopisy.cz, undated). Overnight, relatively isolated mountain inhabitants became citizens of the Third Reich with all the fatal consequences, especially the conscription of able-bodied men to the war fronts, which drastically paralysed local agricultural production. In 1939, 122 inhabitants were recorded here (Severní Polabí, undated).
The definitive end of the old world came in May 1945 with the restoration of Czechoslovak state authority. Based on gradually formed agreements of the victorious powers and subsequent presidential decrees, the process of mass expulsion of the German population began (Severní Polabí, undated; Pištěk, 2006). This act, referred to as the transfer (or expulsion), represented a fatal blow for Babiny. It was not merely the physical relocation of human beings to occupation zones in a devastated Germany, but an immediate and violent severing of thousands of invisible bonds between a specific mountain landscape and the people who knew how to survive in it.
The atmosphere immediately after the war was extremely tense in the region. In the summer of 1945, security forces feared the activities of Nazi saboteurs, the so-called Werwolf units, operating in border forests (Masaryk University, 2024). Historical reports show that on 9 and 10 August 1945, a large-scale inspection operation took place throughout the Litoměřice district (including the Babiny area), involving units of the National Security Corps (SNB) and guard personnel (Masaryk University, 2024). The operation revealed no signs of illegal armed resistance; on the contrary, the German population behaved “very reserved and, with minor exceptions, complied with the measures imposed upon it” (Masaryk University, 2024). A few months later, at the beginning of 1946 (specifically on 26 January by local decree No. B-300/465-46), the so-called “voluntary departures” were officially halted, and the entire process of expulsion was subordinated to strict state organisation in the form of railway transports (Masaryk University, 2024).
The emptied village was offered for settlement by inland settlers and newcomers, but attempts to revive it completely failed. Between 1945 and 1949, a Local National Committee (MNV) formally operated in Babiny I, attempting to maintain economic activity (Severní Polabí, undated). However, the new inhabitants generally lacked experience with harsh submontane farming. They did not possess generational knowledge of the local microclimate, faced inadequate infrastructure, neglected meadows that had once been carefully maintained, and severe winter conditions. Abandoned wooden and half-timbered houses, moreover, deteriorated extremely quickly in the mountain climate without regular heating and maintenance, succumbing to decay, rot, and mould (Masaryk University, 2024).
While before the war the village had more than 140 inhabitants, the census of 1950 (sometimes given as 1951) documented total collapse: only 6 remaining individuals lived in the settlement (Severní Polabí, undated; Pištěk, 2006). This dire situation logically led to the loss of administrative independence. In 1950, Babiny I was stripped of its status as a municipality and attached as a settlement to neighbouring Čeřeniště. A decade later, on 1 July 1960 (effective under Act No. 36/1960 Coll.), administrative boundaries were redrawn, and Babiny fell under the central municipality of Tašov. The final administrative merger occurred in 1980, when the cadastral territory became part of the large municipality of Malečov, where it remains today, although by that time not a single stone of the original settlement remained (Severní Polabí, undated; Pištěk, 2006).