Josef Schneider

“I attended a Czech school but when Hitler came, I had to go to a German one. I was to start the second class of higher elementary, and the teachers tested our knowledge of German. I was examined by the principal, his name was Krebs, and he told me: ´Look, son, you´ve got such a nice German name and you can’t speak German?”

“When we crossed the border, we wrote signs on the railroad cars: ´Mom, we’re coming home!´ We wrote signs like that. We were already on the Czechoslovak territory, it was late and dark, it was at night, and people were curious who we were and where we came from. Some found out that we were German soldiers, and they didn’t even want to give us water to drink. Before, they gave us everything, and now nothing. Well, we didn’t care. We spent the night somewhere and in the morning at seven we arrived to Prague.”

“Masaryk was our daddy, we used to call him daddy Masaryk. Then Beneš came, but nobody respected him anymore. But Masaryk meant a lot to us children. For us he was still daddy, even when we got older. Beneš meant nothing to us. Hitler then came shortly after, and it was over with Beneš, he had to escape. We had a rhyme about it: ´To London Beneš fled, to sit on Churchill’s lap.´”

“There were the Jungmädel and the BDM, Bund der deutschen Mädel, they were older. They camped between Odrovice and Malešovice. They had a nice camp, with electric lights. One day they invited all these Nazi bigheads from Vienna, Brno, from all places, only Germans. We were apprentices. The oldest among us was Fenig, he came from Mušov. He was a rascal and he had an idea that that we would spoil the party for them. There were some two hundred girls and then these bigheads…There was a high-voltage electric power line. His idea was that we would get a wire, throw it over the power line and their light would be gone. However, had the wire touched one of us, he would be dead on the spot. Suddenly all lights went out. That was something, with all the bigheads there… Our boss was there as well, and the day after he told us: ´It was clear to me that you did it. You were lucky that nothing happened to anybody and that they haven’t found out who did it.´ The entire camp was in a field. That’s what we did.” “And he didn’t punish you either?” “He didn’t do anything to us, he was glad that nothing happened. He only said: ´Can you imagine what would happen if they caught you?´”

“The church spire was high and you could see far from it, and everybody was on the lookout there. Especially when Meinl was to arrive for kiritof, for the feast; Meinl used to come every time. The first boys were awaiting him, watching from up there if he was already coming. When they saw him, they shouted down: ´He’s coming, he’s coming!´ The first boys then placed a large drum on the ground, and Meinl stopped by it, threw some money in there, and all the expenses for the feast were paid for.” “He was coming every year?” “Every year. He would ask at the stalls selling sweets how much everything cost, they would tell him some price, and he would pay it all. Children and women then had everything for free.”