Erwin Rupprecht

* 1934

  • "At that time there were two commissioners in the village, these two mayors, as they would have called them. I understood Czech quite well at that time. The daughter of our administrator said that I would teach her German and she would teach me Czech. She taught me Czech. So I heard one Czech telling the other one that we were going to go to Tábor, where his wife was from, and she was going to come here. When my father came back from Libá, we decided we had to leave right away. Unfortunately, he had just put the horses in the stable. So we left with nothing but an empty bag. My father had a rucksack with all the remaining sugar in it. I came back, but I only took the bag, and it was empty. My mother said we'll just wait and see what happens next. And so we said, 'Let's get out of here'. The Ohře River was frozen, but it was melting, so there was already about ten centimetres of water above the ice. So we got to the other side. We sat in the woods until it was completely dark, because at noon the Americans were shooting there. We arrived at Hammermühle, where my mother arranged with a friend of ours, the one who had gotten the cigarettes for us, that he would bring us a sewing machine and a carpet we had hidden in the barn. But our caretaker's daughter saw him, so my grandfather had to pay two thousand crowns for it. We still have the sewing machine and we will keep it as long as I live."

  • "In the fall of 1945, we were threshing corn in the field. The Czech police came and arrested my father. They put this big poster on our house saying 'National Administrator'. We weren't allowed in the mill after that. My father was gone, they arrested him, and the gendarmes told my mother that if she would bring them American cigarettes, they would let him go. It wasn't easy. But what the women had to go through back then is beyond belief. At night, my mother went to Hammermühle, where this friend of ours was, and he managed to get the cigarettes. Flour was the universal currency back then. So we got these three or four packs that we gave to the police. But we didn't know whether they would let my father go or not. As kids we were often afraid, we were afraid a lot.”

  • "Life at the mill was interesting. A lot of people came to us, even as a young boy I was in contact with them. In those days the mill actually served as this kind of a second pub of sorts. I can still recall that during the war we listened to the Swiss radio Beromünster. I had to stand guard because it was forbidden. That's how we got the latest information. People would come to our place and listen with us. But I had to keep watch, and if someone came, I had to let them in and also give them the signal to turn off the radio."

  • "The Hitler Youth meetings were every week, on Saturdays or Sundays, or when there was a holiday. For example, Mother's Day. At that time I had to go from Fischern to Pomezí nad Ohří, which was six kilometers, where we would gather and then we went on to Cheb, another six kilometres. In Cheb they mustered us in the square and then we had to march through the streets. There were children from all over the district. When a child was born in a house, the girls hung a wreath outside the window. And where there was a wreath, you had to stop and sing. Then I had to walk all the way back to Pomezí, it was already dark, and then another six kilometers on foot to Fischern, on my own. After this, my father didn't want me to be in the Hitler Youth. But we couldn't say it openly, as we would raise suspicion immediately. So I had to say that I was afraid. After that, I didn't go anymore. They took away my HJ card and also my food stamps. They weren't that important to us, as we had a mill, but we had lost our sugar rations. As that was for the whole family."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Rehau, 14.09.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:48:14
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

What hurts me the most is that Fischern is only on the map as a defunct village

Erwin Rupprecht, a portrait
Erwin Rupprecht, a portrait
photo: Post Bellum

Erwin Rupprecht was born in 1934 in the village of Fischern, in the Cheb district. His father ran a mill on the banks of the Ohře River, which had been permitted to operate even during the war. Little Erwin loved being involved in all the activities around the mill. In the autumn of 1945 the property was confiscated and in January 1946 his family fled to Bavaria. The impetus for their hasty departure was the information that they were to be sent inland for forced labour. The nearby village of Bayerisch Fischern was to become their new home. The witness went to school in Hohenberg, trained at a weaving mill and had been working there for twenty-three years. He then worked for the railroad in Schirnding. As the Rupprechts’ former home was within sight on the other side of the river, they saw their house, mill and settlement being blown up in the early 1950s. The witness got married and has a daughter and a son. He was one of the founders of the Egerer Birnsunnta festival in Schirnding which he had been organising for years.