František Winter

“Dad and the Wehrmacht. Because at that time, there was conscription, and dad had five brothers, including one half-brother who had to enlist as a minor. One brother was in the Wehrmacht, the other was in the Wehrmacht, and the third somehow disappeared, but I don't know where. Two fell—one somewhere near Ukrainian Sloviansk and another somewhere near Stalingrad. The third one did return, but not here, straight to Germany, to the western zone. And that's the one who owned the other farm down there that we had to take care of."

“I was working on the field far away, almost at Krondörfl. We were sowing oat. When we came back home before noon that day, a commissioner and one more man were already waiting for us in our yard. The commissioner told my dad that that man was interested in our house. My dad told him that he had been told something else. My mom had supper ready for us inside the house but they wouldn’t even let us go inside and eat it. We had to disappear just the way we were. The only things we were allowed to take with us were the clothes we had on. Everything else, all of our belongings, had to stay in the house. Later we were given some things that belonged to the displaced Germans. They would move us from one place to another. The first stay was in a pub in Malá Morava, then we stayed across the street and the third place we stayed was in Vlašský at a saw mill, where my dad was hauling logs. Then the forest administration took over and we moved to Vojtíškov. That’s where I went to school.”

“I don’t know whether it was the Gestapo or not. It was at the very end of the war and the Russians were already here. They heard word about somebody burying something in the ground. Maybe it was the partisans trying to find something at the last minute. They took him and ordered him to dig a hole. Shouldn’t he find anything, it would be his grave, they said. The surface was hard, rock covered, but he had to keep digging. They came again the next day and he had to go digging again. Then they never showed up again. When the Russians came, they too our horses away. They’d also take our pigs and roasted them on straw so that they had something to eat. They kicked us out from our own flat and moved in themselves instead. We had to stay in the little room. It was like in war time”

“As a boy, I had to gather the corn on a horse. We’d go to the field, my dad was in charge of one wagon, I had the other one. Sometimes, I managed to turn the wagon over which drove my dad mad at me. I had to work very hard since I was a little boy.”