Anna Moštková

* 1937  †︎ 2023

  • “We were living in Bärengraben when he was drafted. The neighbours told him to go work in the mines, and he said he wouldn’t go underground for anything. So he had to join the army. He was home on leave twice I think. He always came by train to Branná, and Mum already knew about it and would quickly climb up the cherry tree to pick cherries and then bake a cake from them. She always looked out from the tree to see if he was coming up from Branná. He was home twice, and Mum always accompanied him all the way to the station in Branná. He always told her to go, that he wouldn’t look back. And back then, the last time he left, Mum did turn to look and so did he. That was the last time they saw each other.”

  • “A man came up from Vrbno to say that Dad had died. Before that we had a visit from one cousin from Altenberg who lives in Germany now. Mum walked with her a part of the way, and then that man came and told us that Dad was dead. Mum didn’t want to believe it, she cried, knocked the table over. The man went up to the Scholtzes to ask that someone come to [console] her. So then Mrs Scholtz came and stayed with her.”

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    Staré Město, 12.09.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 02:07:46
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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In the abandoned settlements around Staré Město

Anna Stöhrová (Moštková)
Anna Stöhrová (Moštková)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Anna Moštková was born on 18 February 1937 as the younger of two children of Adolf and Marie Stöhr in the settlement of Bärengraben (Bear Gorge; Medvědí Rokle in Czech - trans.). Her parents were German, like almost all of the local inhabitants. Her life is connected to her native region in the foothills of the Kralický Sněžník and the local settlements that exist no more. Her mother came from Urlich (Javořina) and her father from Altenberg (Starý Kopec). During World War II, in February 1944, her father died serving in the Wehrmacht near the town of Krasnaya Gora in Bryansk Oblast in Russia. Due to the Czechoslovak origin of her mother’s stepfather, the family was not included in the 1946 deportation of Germans. They moved to Kunčice and then Nová Seninka. But most people were forced to leave their ancestral home. Bärengraben was completely deserted after the war. In 1960 the Ministry of the Interior ordered the mass demolition of most of the dilapidated houses. The witness’s birth house was also destroyed, and today not even its foundations can be seen in the undergrowth of the forest. Her parents’ native settlements met a similar fate. Only one house remains in Starý Kopec and six in Javořina. As of 2017, the witness lives with her husband Jan Moštek in Staré Město.