Sonja Hefele

* 1949

  • "In Horní Slavkov we also had excellent teachers. I only know that now, I wasn´t aware of it then. For example, we had wife and husband Kučaba, both of them professors from Charles University. They weren't allowed to teach, so they came to Horní Slavkov and taught at the primary school there, and Mr. Kučaba taught us crafts - and the man couldn't tell a screw from a nail. He was a humanist. He understood ancient Greece and Rome and he would tell us about it. I learned the whole antiquity from him. We didn't have it in our textbooks at all, but he told us all about ancient Greece and Rome because he didn't know anything else apart from that. And for example, his wife was also a professor at Charles University and she was a biologist, but she wasn't allowed to teach - and she taught us physical education and drawing and things like that. We would also go out with her to paint in the garden or in the woods, and she would tell us about her field of interest. So we had really great teachers."

  • We were living next to the uranium mines "Then my father was in the uranium mines. I don't want to say that it was directly forced labour, but he had no other option because my father was not very prudent and now and then he said something that they didn´t like to hear and he had to go to the uranium mines." - "That was in Jáchymov?" - "First in Jáchymov and then in Horní Slavkov. And Horní Slavkov was such a gold miners´ town. There were lots of people from various countries. Lots of Slovaks, lots of Russians, but also Germans, Hungarians. Such a mixture of people, today I can't imagine that you can live well in such a society. But it was a good life. They made it as good as they could. The problem was that in the uranium mines, especially in Horní Slavkov, we were practically living next to the uranium mines, there were political prisoners working, but also people like my father, who was not directly a prisoner, but he had to work there, he had no other chance. It was such a mixture of people. On the other side there was a prison camp, where there were also people who had committed something. What do you call them? They're not political prisoners, but...?" - "Criminals?" - "Yes, criminals. And they were in a camp like that. And we used to go there as children and give them bread, and there were dogs, of course. It was one big playing area for us."

  • "They were working there in conditions no one wants to [work in]. They didn't even have proper protective clothing. It wasn't easy. And everyone was afraid they wouldn't come up again. For example, I remember the first two years when I went to school, it was probably even earlier than that, but I don't know, I clearly recall it only in the first or third year, that always around noon or in the early afternoon, there were these loudspeakers [public address system, trans.] on the road, and there was always a kind of relaxing music, and then they would read the names of those who weren't coming anymore. And for example, a friend of mine, also German, her name was Eda, she lives in Belgium now, her father died there. We heard it [announced] on the road. These are the kind of moments you don't forget."

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    Liberec, 11.05.2022

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She grew up next to uranium mines. For her classmates she was always just a German rat

Witness in Bohemia on her first bike wearing a blouse from Germany, 1959 or 1960
Witness in Bohemia on her first bike wearing a blouse from Germany, 1959 or 1960
photo: Witness´s archive

Sonja Hefele, née Christl, was born on 5 February 1949 into a German family. Her father, Erich Christl, came from Loket near Sokolov, her mother, Ilse Sterlich, from Opole in Silesia. They met in a hospital near Berlin. The Christls were not deported probably because Erich’s father Alfred worked in a power plant near Sokolov. Sonja grew up successively in Loket, Nové Sedlo and Horní Slavkov near the labour camps. Erich worked as an explosives handler in the uranium mines there. The family repeatedly applied for permission to emigrate to Germany, but they weren´t granted it until 1964. The family left Czechoslovakia in November after they had to pay the school fees for Sonja´s education. They settled in Augsburg. Fifteen-year-old Sonja Hefele used to cry because of the change of ambience, even though she had been a frequent target of bullying as a German in the Czech primary school. In 1970 she married Wolfgang Hefele. Two years later, she returned to her native country with her husband for the first time. In 1985, she made a ten-day motorcycle trip in Czechoslovakia. She worked as an interpreter, translator and journalist at a local radio station. After 1989 she promoted German-Czech relations and cultural cooperation between the two countries. She also met Václav Havel. In 2021 she initiated a partnership between Augsburg and Liberec. In 2021 she was awarded the Liberec City Medal. In 2022 she was living in Augsburg.