Eva Weiser

“Česká Lípa—that’s where Lindenau was, and it was a building that belonged to the Schicht factory; they made soap there back then, right? Schicht—a well-known company. They used to run a summer camp for kids there—and it was taken over for us; there were forty of us there. We were given uniforms, and there was military discipline. In the morning, we slept on bunk beds on straw, and all we had were horse-hair blankets. No sheets, nothing—just those heavy horse-hair blankets—and we slept under them. We had uniforms; I have photos from back then. We wore skirts and little hats on our heads—no helmets or weapons—but our work attire consisted of dark blue linen dresses, aprons, iron-toed boots, and inside the house where we lived—where we lived—we walked around in clogs. In the morning, we were woken up, had breakfast, then listened to the news—since it was already wartime, there were reports on what was happening. Then our entire unit would go into the village, and there we’d scatter to the places we’d been assigned—to the farmers as helpers. Whatever needed to be done in the barn, whatever was needed—we had to go there; then in the spring, we’d spread manure on the fields with pitchforks—well, basically, whatever needed to be done on the farm, that’s what we had to do.”

“I don’t get it, and even today I’m upset whenever people talk about nationality. It’s such a trivial thing! What is nationality, anyway? I’m a human being, after all! When we were kids, we used to play together—me from the German school, the kids from the Czech school—we played together. Achtung—watch out. We didn’t care that they spoke German; it didn’t matter to us. We skated together and went sledding together, and that was that.”