Marie Antošová

“The teacher left, the school bell was ringing, and he said: ‘That German swine is taking up space here, and when one needs help, she does not help him.’ He was so stupid... and as chance would have it, I have already had enough. When he said ‘German swine,’ I thought… at first we were called Böhmish, and now we are German swine? It made me so angry that I grabbed a wooden pen-case and I ran after him. He ran into the boys’ bathroom... and I gave him a beating there... I pushed his head into an urinal and I was beating him. And suddenly somebody pulled me up by my collar and led me out... it was the school principal. But I did not even get a worse grade for bad conduct on my school report for that, because the teacher called me a German swine. I just could not put up with it. During the war they were calling us Böhmish, and now we were German swine. I felt sorry about it… I was crying... and so I gave him a threshing. But since that time they began respecting me, and they knew that it was better not to provoke me.”

“At first I was untrustworthy… oh, how the world changes… and so I have served my term. My life was like this. I was fifteen and a half, and I got sentenced to four moths because I did not reveal his name. Who would have informed upon a neighbour who had been helping my parents? I did not want to escape, I was not even able to... my parents were penniless, and I had to go to work to earn money, and I was not even interested in running away. I did not want to… well, I have thus served my term. I was in prison in Klatovy. For the first three weeks I was in solitary confinement and nobody was allowed to come to me, and then I was in a group and I had to work. I was crying that I was hungry, and a female warden took pity upon me and they treated me well, and they were all nice to me there. Except the investigators, they were mean. Then they sent me to work in the kitchen and there were two SS female prisoners…two German women, and I was working with them. When they arrested Bruckdorfer and interned him in the Klatovy prison, they quickly transported me to Pilsen. Firstly because as a juvenile I was to be tried there, and secondly, they did not want me to learn that he was in prison. And then there was another interrogation and other court trials in Prague. I have caused harm to the Czechoslovak Republic…I have survived all this and I am here.”

“There were wires everywhere… when you ran up there, you were already in the wires... a red signal flare flew up and the soldiers already knew that somebody was there. One day they were chasing a roe… there was a roe instead of a man. But many times there was a young soldier who got killed... got shot in the head. That happened when somebody wanted to escape no matter the costs and he was armed and so they defended themselves and they were shooting at him... I saw it myself… when a car arrived to the Border Guards office and they were carrying him out, he was covered with a blanket and he was dead... he was a soldier. I was standing with my baby pram on the opposite side of the street at the butcher’s shop and I saw them carrying him, covered with the blanket. This was happening quite often... they lost their lives. Because they defended themselves, they wanted to escape and when they could not, they would simply shoot… our people, they were bandits…they defended themselves… well, it was a very, very horrible time. Germans had to leave from here and those who wanted to go out were not allowed to. And so they tried to leave illegally.”