Marie Drnková

And the Germans, they were damned. It was only singing, there were the Hitler's youth. They were beating the drums all over the town. I couldn't hear a sound of it. It was every time I was on my way back from the factory. There was also a streetcar, we used to go by streetcar, by a tram. So I rather ran away. I couldn't listen to it, what it was.

It was in 1950 or 51 so you had no money. People hanged themselves, they jumped out of the windows. It was like that, it was awful. So many people in Prague were said to have jumped out of the windows because they had no money. A neighbor of ours hanged himself. We had a little cow then. The old man, the neighbor, used to say: ‘You see, Mařenka, I've got some clothes but when they take money from me, well, I've got some money. It would be worse.’ And I replied: ‘You see, when you've got some money and you have your little cow. Don't worry, it will have to be solved somehow. And you'll be all right again.’ We always used to keep cows out at grass. He had his own cow and I had my own one. And he used to say: ‘Of course, Mařenka, you're right. And it will be all right again, won't it?’ ‘Of course it will, look, they have to give us some money again, what would we live for.’ And it happened one morning. He, the neighbor, hanged himself in a cowshed, in a little cowshed on a ladder. He hanged himself. And I said I used to reason him out of it. He used to say: ‘You're right, aren't you?’ He agreed but he fell down soon again. And he changed his mind again and kept saying: ‘How shall I live? How shall I live?’ You know, old people.

And the children... Their mums told them we were Czech. Then they shouted at us: ‘Du bist tschechisches Schwein! (You're Czech pigs!)’ That we were Czech pigs. Well, we knew Czech, you see, but they said it in German so that we didn't understand them. There was a woman from Chlumek, she spoke perfect German. She always translated what the sods shouted at us. They threw stones and little balls at us. I also took a stone and also clouted it at them. Girls told me: ‘Give over, leave them alone. You could be imprisoned for it. There is nothing with them.’ So I left them alone.”

“And some of them, when I was at Homman and Katz, the Germans who were there, they knew already they were loosing. There was a front approaching, they were thirty kilometers from Pforzheim. They knew already they finished. There was a picture of Hitler on the wall, a photograph. It was in every factory. Yuck, yuck, they spat and said Scheisse (shit). And they swore at him. What was it good for when loads of Germans stayed there in the war. They also lost their lives. And there were so many women, widows. They swore at Hitler, all of them. Hitler started the war and he ended up like that. And when we were there, they attempted on his life in Pforzheim many times. He had similar body-doubles. And they always got the wrong one. The one who was no genuine Hitler, he always paid for it.”