They wanted to expel Mum and my brothers. I would just stay with Daddy
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Margit Janatová was born on 28 August 1936 in Königshan (today’s Královec). Her father Karel Nývlt was Czech and her mother Anna Nývltová (née Siegel) was German. She spent her early childhood during World War II, in the border region of the Sudetenland, which was annexed by Nazi Germany. At the time of liberation, they witnessed the passage of first the German and then the Soviet army. After the war, her mother’s father, Henry Siegel, and his other daughter were expelled. As part of the post-war settlement of the so-called German question, the witness´s brothers and her mother were also threatened with deportation from Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of the 1950s she was apprenticed in a spinning mill in Horní Adršpach. She married František Janata in 1958. A year later their son František was born. Margit Janata’s husband was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) until 1968, when he left the party. His political defection made it impossible for his son František to study. Margit Janatová spent her entire professional life at Texlen, from which she retired in 1989. At the time of the recording, in 2025, shewas living in Žacléř.
