“As there are the factories, Polish people - POWs, Frenchmen, Ukrainian young women, and young men were there for forced labours. One could say that there would be hatred or something like that. It is not true. My mum had two young women for training in the painting room, she was a painter – of hand-painted porcelain. And those young women had lunch with us every Sunday. And each woman in the painting room had two young women for training, they brought them snacks in the mornings because they were hungry, they were young...”
“Well, I, my mum, brother, and dad ... I mean there was a transport to the Czech part in 1938 because we did not want to live under Hitler´s government. Dad would not allow it, but we could not do anything about it anyway. We spent the first night at a school in Hlinsko. Mum, brother and I, Dad was a lorry driver in a mill near Mladá Boleslav. We left here everything, our flat, everything. There were more transports like this one when Germans moved to the Czech part because Beneš promised: ‘I am here for everyone.‘ Rubbish! Such a liar... Should I not say that?”
- “Talk, it is interesting.” –
“You can delete that.”
- “So, did you move out?” –
“We went away, we had duvets with us, at first, we slept in Hlinsko. I was seven years old, and I had always been afraid of geese. I and my mum went out in the morning because we had to get some food and there were geese on the road in Hlinsko! Well, of course, I said: ‘Oooh‘ and my mum: ‘Well, one goose is afraid of the other one.‘ Then we came to Prague, we slept there in a cinema, I know that there was a mirror in the corner where a photo of the American actress Shirley Temple was if you know her.”
- “Yes, I do.” –
“I can still remember that I slept under Shirley. Then we got to Plasy, to the big monastery, so I was afraid again, so I did not even go to the bathroom on my own. It was a big monastery, a high one.”
- “And why did they have you moving like that?” –
“At the end, they sent us home and at the station in Turnov, there was s Czech army guarding the train of refugees.”
- “So, the Czechs did not want you?” –
“The Czechs? Beneš did not want us.”
“She thought up mischiefs just like all of us. Once we climbed up into the church towers because we were curious, it was all beams. And when we went down, one came out through the exit to the monastery on the first floor, and oh, the door closed. Someone had locked us there.”
- “And what did you do?” –
“We sat down on the stairs and waited; we said to each other that someone would have to let us go. Clotilda was sitting next to me. And we waited and waited. The door opened in about an hour. We had a parish priest there, Anastas Peer, he was a great guy, whether the boys were joking or whatever, he just took everything as a boy thing. Then Florian was there, he was from Bavaria, he was a mountain climber, and he died in the Alps after the war. And then there was another one, Richard Ryšavý, he was mean. He did not understand children. Of course, it was Richard Ryšavý who had locked us. And he opened the door and had us lined up in the hall. The two of us being the first, he took us by the hair and beat our heads like that.
- “Didn´t he care that she was a princess?” –
“He did not care but we were surprised how he could dare. And he was so furious that he did not care about it. And she did not report it at home, nothing happened because of it.”
Margita Kučerová was born on 24 May 1931 in Hejnice to a German family. Her father Franz Hammer worked as a bus driver, and her mother Hedwiga Hammerová was employed in the painting room of the Hejnice porcelain factory. The witness had a brother Franz who was ten years older. The family with other anti-fascists left Hejnice at the beginning of October 1938. It was because her father did not want to live in Hitler Germany of which the village became part after the Munich Agreement had been signed and the borderlands had been seized. The witness remembers the first night in Hlinsko and overnight stays in Prague and Plasy. The Hammers did not find shelter anywhere, so they had to return to Hejnice. The father of Margita Kučerová had problems with Gestapo as a communist and anti-fascist but thanks to his employee who protected him and his friendship with the mayor of Hornischer, he was never arrested. Because of poor health, he did not have to enlist contrary to the witness´s brother who died on the Eastern Front in 1943. She attended elementary school in Hejnice during the war, she sat at a desk with Princess Clotilda von Auesperg, the granddaughter of Franz Clam-Gallas. Her father died of lung cancer in December 1944, and only the witness and her mum lived to see the end of the war. Their father’s anti-fascist reputation spared them from cruel treatment at the hands of the Skuteč battle group members, who came to Hejnice after the war to look after the Germans. They were not displaced thanks to the indispensability of her mother, who worked in the painting room of the Hejnice porcelain factory. Fourteen-year-old Margita started to work after the war - at first, she worked in a food shop under national administration, later in the production of Hejnice porcelain factory, she then spent forty-two years working in administration at the Tesla company. In 1954, she got married to Czech Josef Kučera, they raised a son and a daughter together. She became involved in the actions of the Union of Germans. She lived in Hejnice in 2023.
The Hammers family in May 1943 in a photo taken in Augsten Atelier in Hejnice during the last visit of brother of Margita Kučerová who fought in the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front
The Hammers family in May 1943 in a photo taken in Augsten Atelier in Hejnice during the last visit of brother of Margita Kučerová who fought in the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front
Scholz Hotel (formerly Kaiserhof) with a monument to the fallen men of Hejnice in the First World War on a pre-war postcard. Neither the hotel nor the monument in Hejnice is standing anymore
Scholz Hotel (formerly Kaiserhof) with a monument to the fallen men of Hejnice in the First World War on a pre-war postcard. Neither the hotel nor the monument in Hejnice is standing anymore
Renewed monument to the fallen men of Hejnice in the First World War next to the Riedl House, where Josef Riedl, the founder of the glassmaking tradition in the Jizera Mountains, was born. Today there is a bakery in the house
Renewed monument to the fallen men of Hejnice in the First World War next to the Riedl House, where Josef Riedl, the founder of the glassmaking tradition in the Jizera Mountains, was born. Today there is a bakery in the house
Hejnice from the viewpoint of Poustevníkův kámen, which used to be a forest theatre before the war (Smrk, Paličník and Smědavská hora are in the background)
Hejnice from the viewpoint of Poustevníkův kámen, which used to be a forest theatre before the war (Smrk, Paličník and Smědavská hora are in the background)
The middle of the Fritsch houses in Ferdinand in 2023, the grandmother of the memoirist lived in the last one. Originally six families lived in one house, today two
The middle of the Fritsch houses in Ferdinand in 2023, the grandmother of the memoirist lived in the last one. Originally six families lived in one house, today two
