Anna Michalski

* 1924

  • “You had to get out of the village, from your homes and cattle and everything was still there in the stables and they brought the cows elsewhere. My sisters said the cows did not want to go, they always wanted to go back to their own stable, they had to beat them with sticks to proceed. That was bad for us. The cows mooed, always wanting to turn around and go into their own stable.”

  • “The home is home. That's true. I always wanted to go back there, but I finally gave up. They did not want to see me again. I was excommunicated from the national union. I had to inquire specifically at the Prague government that they would accept me back to the country. I didn’t know why either. This is quite harsh, don’t you think?”

  • „There was a men's camp next to us, separated with barbed wire of course, and with towers all around. And when we were out, men wanted to have a little bit of contact with us, women. Then they always wrote us notes and wrapped them around a stone and threw them over the barbed wire. Sometimes the convoys, the watchpots on guard, they have spotted some but just did as if they do haven´t see anything at all. They did not want to spoil our fun. But some were bad; several have even shot out. And then a man from prisoners - we were just separated by the barbed wire, he missed it and it stayed in the fence. And a certain girl wanted to take it out anyway and he shot at her. She was hanging there - I never forget the picture – how the girl hung in the barbed wire. She was not dead, just shot in the leg. I can still see the picture even today, it was terrible.”

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    Osnabrück, Deutschland, 18.08.2016

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    duration: 04:40:58
    media recorded in project Memories for the Future
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I have got to learn about many nationalities. There are people everywhere, such and such

Anna Michalski (2016)
Anna Michalski (2016)
photo: Pamět národa - Archiv

  Anna Michalski was born on March 27, 1924 in Niesnersberg, today called Nýznerov, nearby Žulová (Friedberg), region Jeseník (Freiwaldau in Schlesien). She had eight siblings. The family was very poor, the situation after the WW1 brought much hunger along. During the times of Hitler there was an improvement, so called children´s allowance among other things. The family as well as the many other people in the almost purely German territory of the Czechoslovakia, which was established in 1918, was glad that they could belong to Germany as Germans. Anna and also most of the other children reported to the Hitler Youth without being its active members. In 1945 the Russians came and took Anni with other Germans to Glatz (today Klodsko in Poland). There she signed an false accusation by the Germans and was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in Siberia at the age of 21. A few months after the verdict she was already with three other German women in Norilsk. After an intervention by Konrad Adenauer in 1955 she returned, although not to Silesia, but to the western part of Germany. There she later met her husband, who also came from Silesia, and founded a family in Osnabrück. She only met her parents, who were not allowed to participate in the resettlement, much later, because she became an “unwanted” person due to her stay in the labour camp. She remained in Osnabrück, where she now lives in a retirement home.