"During the war, we had, we had in the garden, just where this pergola is now, so there it was made in the corner, there was a piece of shed and still a barn. The first barn was for a pig, the second barn for was a goat and then there were pigeons and hens. Well, there was a terrible mess here, you can't imagine that. But again, we had something to eat. People had nothing to eat, but again we had to watch over it, because such were the bad Czechs, that they once told us that we had a pig and that we killed him and did not hand him over. It all had to be handed over to the slaughterhouse, they only gave you a small bit of it. Well, of course we didn't, and they betrayed us. But again, even though he was German, I went to school with his girlfriend, Erika, and he told his mother that he would come to us the next day to look at the Gestapo, that we had meat cleaned up somewhere. So, they came here, they pierced our duvets. So, for the first time, I was really scared, it was ugly. But they didn't find anything, we spread it around the neighbours."
"In 44, I left business school and got a job at a bank. I was in the bank for exactly a week, and the Germans ordered those born in 1928, 1929 and 1930 to work in production." - "What did you produce?" - "Well, they produced... everything was produced for the Germans, just ammunition. It was in Vysočany and there were factories, there was Siemens, Aerovka and I don't remember the third one. Well, few people got there. So they usually took us to Dresden to clean up the wreckage in Germany. And since my dad was the chief warehouseman at Aerovka in Vysočany, he took me there as an assistant. So I was employed with him as an assistant, I just handed out tools to the workers so that they could work."
Magdalena Emmerová was born on July 27, 1928 in Prague. She attended a primary, middle-class and business school, graduating in 1944. A week after starting work at the bank, her year was called up for production, but thanks to her father, the witness only moved to the Aerovka factory in Vysočina. After they secretly killed a pig at home and were charged, the Gestapo came to search for them. After the war, Magdalena worked briefly in a law firm and later for many years at Prague Airport. In 2022 she lived in Prague.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
