It wasn’t our fault they made us Germans
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Marie Obrusníková, née Schwanczarová, was born in Kobeřice in the Hlučín area on 10 September 1936. Her father Antonín Schwanczar was a bricklayer and used to work in Germany before the war. After the annexation of Hlučín to the Nazi Third Reich in 1938, he had to enlist in the Wehrmacht. He survived the Battle of Stalingrad, fought on the Italian front and was listed as missing for a long time. Long after the war, the German part of the family discovered, through the Red Cross, that his military dog tag had been found in Italy. Marie Obrusníková with her mother and brothers witnessed the frontline passing through Kobeřice in the spring of 1945. She remembers Soviet soldiers staying there for a long time. After the war, she had to learn Czech quickly because she had spoken mainly German prior to that. After elementary school and six months of apprenticeship, she took a worker job in the new materials plant in Chuchelná. She married at age 19 and built a house with her husband. Three children were born to her. She also worked as a bricklayers’ helper in the Kobeřice gypsum quarry. She visited her father’s grave in northern Italy for the first time in the 1980s. She retired from her job as a cook’s helper in a tavern. She was living in her home in Kobeřice in 2024.
