Manfred Hacker

* 1938

  • "In that August, we were sitting at home in the morning and she was sick, my wife, and she said: 'Go with the kids to the nursery because I'm sick.' So I was packing them up to go to the nursery with them. That was when they were maybe two or three years old. And suddenly my wife says: 'Man, what's that noise? There's some tanks coming.' She saw out the window, right. I said: 'But they must be some kind of drills from Jaroměř or somewhere.' Then I said to myself that there were no tankers in Jaroměř, I hadn't thought of anything. I thought that probably the soldiers were having some kind of exercise. So, I said: 'Yes, indeed.' I went with the children to the kindergarten. There was a lady next to me, I can't remember her name, and she and another lady were talking and crying. I said: 'Something happened to you?' And she said: 'Don't you know about this? The Poles and the Russians attacked us.' I didn't know about it at all. And then when I came home, I think it was Moučková talking on the radio, or on TV. So, we learned something about it. But the boys... So I went to the town, I left the children there, I went to the town and there I saw tanks in the new town. They were standing like this in the front of - just in the entrance to the town. And now one man called me: 'Fréd, come, you speak Polish, ask why they came.' So I went to one of the tanks and I said: 'Dla czego przyszedleś?' And none of them wanted to answer. There were about five or six of them sitting there, the soldiers on the tank. Then one said: 'We didn't even know where we were going.'"

  • "The neighbors were excellent, but there were about four young guys in our village, about as old as we were, it was 1945 in that year - how old were we, maybe seven to twelve years old. So, they were just nasty, they called us cockroaches, and if they could, they would have just smashed us. So, it sometimes happened too. But then I went to that Polish school, and there were such nice people, such noble people, that it's not quite normal. Because there they shake hands when we went to school, they said to each other: 'Honor, honor,' (Greetings) they have to say hello. Then I calculated that it was actually only the four guys who would always fight, and there was always alcohol involved, that were really spoiling it for us.'

  • "At that time, when the Poles arrived, it was already in the year forty-five, in the middle of the year the Russians were there, but then there were the Poles. And the people didn't know if they should run away to the Czech Republic, or let themselves be transported hundreds of kilometers away and they didn´t know where, where they would even go. So, at that time, at least - I don't know, just thousands of people fled to Czech, even if some of them didn't know Czech language. However, they knew, because everyone said to themselves: 'If I run away to Czech, it will end here in half a year. It has to come back, it can't be like this. And then returning from Germany somewhere a thousand kilometers would be worse, so we will go to Czech.' They fled to Čermná, to Kostelka, to Náchod. 'And then we would be at home again in a day, and from Germany God knows when we would get back.' That's why so many people fled to Czech, even if they were Czechs or even Germans."

  • "In that year, forty-six or forty-five at the end, we suddenly came home, and we had learnt that we had to be at the station within half an hour, that we were going away. So, we packed everything, mom had a pot of marmalade she had from blueberries, which we had to leave there, even though we knew there wouldn't be anything to eat. We went to the station, it was already full of people, one train had already left. And then they told us that we could go back, that there was no other train going. I noticed that a motorcycle with a Russian soldier and Mrs. Neumann, Tony Neumann, drove past us twice. And he went back and forth, and I didn't know why, and some lady there said that the Russians still wanted us not to leave yet, because it was still under Russian command at that time in forty-five, and the Poles took it upon themselves, into their own hands.”

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    Velké Poříčí, 23.06.2022

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    Velké Poříčí, 17.04.2023

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An aggressive young Polish man went at the Czech musicians with a hammer

Manfred Hacker, 1955
Manfred Hacker, 1955
photo: archive of the witness

Manfred Hacker was born on 11 September 1938 in Slané, Kłodzko region, which was then in Germany. His grandparents came here from Bohemia at the beginning of the 20th century, and the family retained Czech citizenship. His mother’s relatives had to enlist in the Wehrmacht. In 1945, Kłodzko fell to Poland and the Hackers were lucky to escape the wild deportation organized by the Polish side. For many years the witness had to endure the aggressive behaviour of the Polish youths, for whom he remained a German. In 1947, a Czech school was founded in Lázně Chudoba, where Manfred Hacker also attended, and a Czech association was founded, of which his father became the chairman. When he was studying at the grammar school in Náchod, he had to report to the Polish customs every day, which made it impossible for him to live a normal life. Later, he wanted to move to Czechoslovakia and study at the military school in Žilina. The permission to move out took too long and the school removed him from the list of students. Because of the Polish authorities’ sluggishness, he had to resign from his studies. He then worked as a worker and locksmith in the Stavostroj company. Gradually he completed his education and worked in the sales department. With his wife Hana Hacker, née Machová, he brought up two sons. Despite persistent pressure, he refused to join the Communist Party. After 1989 he participated in the remedy of Czech-Polish-German relations in the Kłodzko region. He helped organize meetings of native Czechs from the Czech Corner and in 2022 he prepared a book about Slané in Kłodzko region for publication. In 2022 he was living in Nové Město nad Metují.