Marianne Pasetti-Svoboda
* 1927
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“Doctor Klapka was the mayor of Loket. He was very nice. Very suddenly they imprisoned our poor grandma, and interned her in the casemates at the castle. She didn’t even know why they imprisoned her. With the help of Doctor Klapka, Mother found a lawyer. We learnt that the reason for her arrest was because she had moved to Loket, thereby avoiding the internment of Germans in Prague. The lawyer couldn’t do anything for her. But Grandma sent us a message that they were treating her well. One day, when I was already working in the district office, a police chief came into our office. He asked me: ´How is your grandma doing?´ I replied: ´But Mr. director, you must know this better than I.´ And I began crying. He then told me to come for my grandma. He wrote a release order for me, and I ran up there immediately. There was a heavy gate, and I banged on it, and said: ´Please, I have come for my grandma.´ A young policeman who was by the gate told me: ´But your grandma is not here anymore! We transported her to Cheb!´ I began crying again. He told me to wait a moment and then he eventually brought my grandma to me.”
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“They behaved well in Doksy. There were no terrible things happening here, as we heard from other places. One night somebody was banging on our door. Mom started trembling. She told me to go to the attic and she and my fifteen-year-old brother went to open the door. There was a Russian soldier, and he only kept saying: ´колбаса! колбаса!´ Mom didn’t know that it meant a sausage, but she answered him in Czech, and that was also probably the reason that nothing happened to us. Later an officer came and explained to her that they wanted her to boil the sausage to make it hot. Then he brought some vodka and Mom and my brother had to drink with them. They both drank like crazy to empty the bottle because they wanted to leave as little as possible for the soldiers. The officer then dropped on the couch and fell asleep. My brother was watching him the whole night so that nothing would happen. He slept there and then he left.”
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“I was born in Prague. All my family came from Prague. They were Germans, but all of them naturally knew Czech. When I was a little girl, I learnt Czech first. I think that even now my accent is rather Czech.”
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“During the Protectorate, a border line was established on the railway between Prague and Doksy. My mother travelled to Prague several times and she would always meet one Czech woman who begged Mom to smuggle her suitcase, which was loaded with food. Mom was naturally glad she could help. At the end of the war this woman then wrote a testimonial about my mother, testifying that mother had behaved well during the war. Thanks to this, Mom was then allowed to ride trains after the war, which was otherwise prohibited to Germans.”
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“Mom kept saying: ´I am an Austrian! I am neither a Czech nor German. I am just an Austrian.´ I can understand her, because she had grown up in a different state. But you should know that we loved President Masaryk. When he died, we followed his funeral in the newspapers and on the radio, and we cried a lot. We really loved him. But we didn’t like Beneš, however, because he was against Germans - he was opposed to Germans from the very beginning.”
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Německo?, 02.05.2011
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My ability to speak Czech has played a major role. It has saved my life several times
Marianne Pasetti-Svobodová was born in 1927. She comes from a wealthy Catholic family of Prague Germans. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was a housewife. Marianne is the elder of two siblings. She received her surname Pasetti from her husband, who is of Italian origin. The family was completely bilingual, and the children were able to use Czech and German on the same level without any problems. It was her knowledge of Czech which has saved her life and made her life easier, especially immediately after WWII. After her parents divorced in 1935, her mother with her children moved to Doksy. Neither of her parents ever joined the NSDAP, but the children had to attend the Hitlerjugend. Marianne’s mother was helping one Czech woman to smuggle food during the war. A testimonial from that person then considerably helped the whole family after the war. Her father was killed in 1945 in Silesia. In May, 1946 her mother decided to move to Germany. Marianna worked there as a translator for a television station. She visited the Czech Republic for the first time only one year after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.