I was always the black sheep, I had a Czech dad and a German mom
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Růžena de Weij, born Kollnerová, was born on February 26, 1934 in the village of Tvořihráz in the Znojmo region. She came from a mixed Czech-German marriage, as a result of which she experienced many humiliations during a tense time. When she was only three years old, her mother died and she was entrusted to the care of her German relatives in nearby Prosiměřice. Her father had no interest in her. Her childhood was full of traumas, the greatest of which she experienced as a result of the post-war expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. She herself was not subjected to the deportation, but almost all the inhabitants of the small town of Prosiměřice, including her relatives, were transported to the assembly camp in Znojmo. As a result, the then twelve-year-old Růžena suffered a severe psychological shock. She did not speak Czech at that time and was therefore unable to complete her primary education. For the next two years she survived in completely unsatisfactory conditions. She earned her living as a farm maid, and a little later the Czechoslovak authorities allowed her to learn to spin. Her first marriage to a pilot of the Czechoslovak People’s Army broke down, and she experienced further disappointment during a visit to her relatives in Germany. It took her twenty years to get permission to travel, and her original family treated her coldly. It was only after her marriage to Johann de Weij, whom she followed to the Netherlands in 1975, that she gained a foothold. She returned to the Czech Republic after thirty years and now (2025) lives in Prague.
