„I understand that there was a vast hatred of the Germans here when the things that were happening in the concentration camps, the horrors, came to light. I understand. On the other hand, fifteen years ago, as I began to study history, I went to see more distant relatives previously displaced to Germany. But I also talked to those who came here. I heard a relative's story. She told me, ‚So imagine, I was in Kotle, in a beautiful cottage by the millennial linden trees, everything was beautiful.‘ Her father was at the front. She was about 11 years old, and her mother said to her one day, ‚Take only a doll, but only one, your favourite. We have to go.‘ Then Elfrida cried, she was from the Hörbe family, her father was from Hörbe. And then they got to a farmer in the GDR, he didn't even want them there much, because he was upset that he had to take care of other people. Some troubled woman and one little girl, so not even ideal for working. Elfrida was traumatised. Stories and cases like that are always terrible.“
„After the outbreak of the war, as her father was of German nationality and young, he had to enlist in the army for the Wehrmacht. He fell near Stalingrad in 1942. My grandmother was alone, a widow and left alone with four small children, alone. She remained a widow practically until the end of her life.“– „In what kind of army was your fallen relative, your grandfather?“ – „It was my grandfather Wilibald Tomasch. I think he was with the infantry.“ – „Have any of his letters from the front survived?“ – „Some have survived. My uncle has them. He wrote them to his wife, always greeting his children. I think he went on vacation from the front a couple of times. At first, I think he was in France, in Poland as well at the beginning of the war perhaps. Some of the letters were preserved, I saw them once, I did not have the opportunity to study them in detail, I did not burden them at home. They were letters of a man writing to a woman he loves and passing on his feelings and greetings to his children, whom he had never seen much. I don't think he saw his last son at all. He was born after his death.“
„I also met a lot of bitter displaced Sudeten Germans. I was at conferences and one lady scolded me for caring, for collecting old postcards, that they were their postcards, their villages. It was exaggerated on the other side. We are friends with those who come here, those who were born here or have already been born in Germany, but have a connection to it here. The encounters are nice and enriching, they want to learn, like me, like us, about the extinct villages and how our ancestors lived there. And what they tell me at the end of life is especially important; when a person goes back to their roots a lot and has memories. Like the gentleman who wrote us the preface to the Museum of the Upper Villages, Werner Friedrich of Palohlav. He was displaced at the age of fourteen with his brothers and his mother, so he knows a bit more about it. He remembers, for instance, how there were water tanks to catch water in the Upper Villages. There wasn't much there, so they built reservoirs in Palohlavy from sandstone blocks. His mother always sent him there and said, 'Go up the stairs and wash your feet in the reservoir.' That's what he always did, and he has a fond memory of it. When he comes once a year, we go to Palohlav. Last time it didn't work out anymore, since it was overgrown. But the time before that he washed his feet. It seems to me that it makes sense before the very last moment to enrich themselves like this. They come to their hometowns, and most importantly it's hopefully not sad for them and we help them, the elderly. That we talk to them and laugh together.“
Petr Polakovič was born on September 6, 1963 in Liberec. Dad worked as a soldier, he came from Slovakia. The family moved to Stará Boleslav soon after Petr’s birth. They often went to see the witness’s grandmother in Náhlov in the Českolipsko region. His grandmother was from a mixed Czech-German marriage and was born in the now defunct Sudeten German village Holičky. Petr Polakovič experienced the occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic by Warsaw Pact troops on vacation with his parents at Lake Balaton in Hungary. Náhlov was located in the former Ralsko military area, where the witness encountered the Soviet occupiers. He graduated from high school and the University of Economics in Prague. During summers he went to international construction camps, where he met university students from the democratic Western world. After a year of military service, he joined the IMEX Foreign Trade Company in 1987. He experienced the Velvet Revolution in Prague, and the company’s management allowed them to attend demonstrations on Wenceslas Square as of November 20, 1989. After the Velvet Revolution, IMEX disappeared and Petr Polakovič worked in foreign trade elsewhere. He became interested in his German, Czech and Slovak ancestors. His German ancestors more often than not fell in the war, others were part of the expulsion after 1945. His Slovak uncle fought in the wars against Nazism in the ranks of the guerrillas. After 1989, Petr Polakovič met with the displaced Sudeten Germans or their descendants. He researched the history of villages that disappeared after World War II in Ralsko. In Náhlov, he founded the Museum of Upper Villages and the Expatriate Museum of Emigration to Brazil. He helped the descendants of the Sudeten Germans who left for Brazil in the 19th century to find their old homes and their descendants who lived in Germany or the Czech Republic. He married twice and raised two children with each wife. In 2021 he lived in Náhlov.
Mother of Petr Polakovič (top left) with her mother and her brothers in the 1950s. Mother Emma, children Siegfried, František a Gerhard (from the left)
Mother of Petr Polakovič (top left) with her mother and her brothers in the 1950s. Mother Emma, children Siegfried, František a Gerhard (from the left)
