Herbert Böhm

"I was lucky that I did it for two or three days. When we cleaned up the middle of Decin from unexploded ordnance, there were burning stores on the East railway station so we were sent to work there. In those stores I walked in clogs in the burning grains and drove it on a wheelbarrow. That pushed away the burning stuff and underneath it [grains] was still good, so we moved it out. There they put it in containers and drove it away. I got blisters on my feet, they were as big as half a finger and back home they had to pierce them ... Well, terrible things. And those saved me from having to go back there. I did it for a week, or a fortnight. The entire time while the warehouses were burning."

„No. They declared him dead in ten years. But for those ten years I was not an orphan and my mum was not a widow, nor a single-mother. Well it was quite terrible. Financially we were a social case. Terrible. I had no own books at school. They gave me everything, what someone returned from the previous school year. And when there was none, I had nothing. In some subjects, such as geography and history, I had no books. It was all good what I heard, but still I got D in it. That way they ruined everything for me.“

"In every house there was a national manager with a list of people. We were enlisted as Germans, so even before they already confiscated our coal cellar, we wore charcoal though the house. They made our life difficult. They reported us to the displacement soon enough - my mother had not even applied for her Czech citizenship."

„How did the people treat you, when you wore the tape as a sign you are German?“ „It was nasty. They called us dirty Germany and we could not speak a word in German. Once I spoke it and a Czech person was nearby, they beat me up. But not more than a couple of slaps, so I kept my mouth shut and didn’t tell anyone at home, until I learnt Czech.“