Franz Konrad

“There were hundreds of people there, the food was terrible, only turnip soup in the morning, noon and evening, a whole fortnight there was nothing but turnip soup. And there were also a lot of bedbugs there. Oh my God, at night you could see them marching up and down the bunk beds. Soon we had bites all over us. That was terrible, but it was only a fortnight so we managed to last. Svitavy, that’s about thirty kilometres from us, from Moravská Třebová. Those were military buildings, where they put us up. We were locked inside until they could send us further, until they sent us by train to Germany.”

“Everything happened normally, but then from the Czech side someone came along to take a look at the house, right? ‘I like it, I’ll take that one!’ And that’s how it was with us. We had a farm and then one day a man came along with the Commissar: ‘So he’ll take this house.’ And that meant we had to move, and that’s how it went, in quite a short time, in two or three days we had to pack up and stand in front of the house with fifty kilograms. And then we carried on to Svitavy and in Svitavy we were put into the big camp and that Suchomel, or whatever he was called, brought his whole family along and lived in our house. Until today, of course then his son and now his grandson, right… Because we’ve already been there, twice already and the name Suchomel is on our house. There was the Commissar and three or four people who were responsible for the whole resort, the whole village… anyone who was interested in a house had to go to him. And that’s how all the houses were gradually taken, one by one. And that Suchomel came to him one day and went with the Commissar to take a look at the house and said: right, I’ll take this house. And then immediately they said we had to go and we had only three or four days before expulsion. (We took only) the most important things with us, we had a bed and then the most important things like clothing and cups and plates, we took those as well.”

“They drove all the cows from the whole village together and wanted to send them to Russia. They put them behind the fire brigade’s fence and the next day they were to leave for Russia. Then they went to get my father: ‘he has to come with us, harness the horses!’ The Russians threw their backpacks and things on a cart and he had to go with them. We, my mother, sister and me, of course we cried our eyes out. But the Russians said: ‘Back, he has to come with us, he’ll find a new mamushka in Russia’ or something like that, they said. And then with them, the cows and the transport, our father walked about sixty or seventy kilometres. In the end they slept somewhere and the Russians drank a lot, which my father made use of and asked some woman to bring him sacks. He tied these to the horses legs to muffle the hooves and around half past one at night he started out. If they caught him, they’d already said right away he’d be shot. But he risked it anyway. He could’ve escaped easier on his own, but he wanted to take his horses with him. He started out for home, slept in the woods and at home he hid for three days in the woods as well. And then we had our daddy back! We were so happy, because we thought we’d never see him again. That was double the joy!”

“We had one meadow ‘on the Czech side’. Then during haymaking we’d cross over the border and bring back the hay in our cart. And of course down there we bought up whatever things we couldn’t get ourselves. For me it was pencils, school notebooks and similar things and we’d hide them in the hay. And that’s how we smuggled things over the border. But once there was a police man and my father had to stop and he checked to see if we were hiding anything. But it was just small things, notebooks and such. So my dad only got a fine. But if there had been more, it would probably have ended differently. But that was back then, when there were things on the other side that you couldn’t get in Germany, meaning in our Sudety, which at that time was German.”