Bruno Fischer

* 1947

  • "It was so that most of the officers, I mean even the warrant officers and the enlisted men, we enlisted men were under the oath, we had no oath...When they (the occupiers) came, the regiment opposed. They put some SKOT (armoured personnel carrier) in the gate so that nobody could get in. They didn't let the Russians in, they came there, and they wanted to go in, but they didn't let them in. Then, they quickly made an oath for us to go out. As enlisted men, we used to go out for a beer or to see the girls, as it were. I remember that the Russian troops that were there had their headquarters on the old scale. That was an automobile scale, where they weighed the cars, there were buildings, and that's where they had the headquarters. We used to go there to see them and talk to them normally as best we could. No swearing, we took the guns apart, we had fun. I played chess with an officer, he beat me right away, he was good. We were having a normal conversation with them, and the boys didn't know what was going on. That was the first group that came in. They were here for about a fortnight or a month, and then they got replaced because they came in expecting I don't know what. Nothing happened, then they changed them, and then, it was a little different."

  • "At nineteen, I was supposed to go to the military service, of course. That was just the beginning and middle of the sixties when there was a big emigration of Germans to Germany, the original inhabitants. It was called family reunification, Familienzusammenführung, where it was possible to move in with relatives, parents, siblings or aunts. Under the conditions here, each person had to pay 10,000 crowns, regardless of adult or child, simply three people, thirty thousand crowns. That was one thing. The second thing was that one could export what one could. We also wanted to move out, and we had quite a lot of books. I had to make a list and have a certificate from the State Scientific Library in Pilsen that these were the books I could take out. Not so much from an ideological point of view, like Mein Kampf, there was nothing like that, but if they were not some antique books, which I understand. I still have all these papers and applications at home. I know that in those days, people were moving and taking things away in cattle cars, that's what I was doing in those days on the railroad. People were transporting furniture and all sorts of things, I remember that. We were going to apply but we didn't even apply, so I got a two-year adjournment. Long story short, we didn't move out because my parents never - I'm surprised they were so optimistic, I guess they were hoping - they never put together 30,000, considering what their pensions were and how much a car cost back then, a regular Škoda cost twenty grand and who had a car back then? Thirty grand was out of the question, so we stayed here."

  • "My parents had a minimum pension. My mom started with three hundred, and my dad had seven or eight hundred. We were a very poor family because the pension was insufficient. My parents wanted me to go to the general secondary school of those days after primary school, so I would have some education. After a twelve-year school, you don't know anything, but you have some education. I remember that it was a big misery. My parents were so anxious for me to go to that school that they were indeed starving. I remember to this day that I had a chocolate gingerbread for a snack that cost two crowns, that was all I could have. Then, with lunch, they paid for it somehow, but at home, we were really poor."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Karlovy Vary, 22.08.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:28:28
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The deportation passed them by, but as Germans, they lived on the edge of poverty

Bruno Fischer in 1959
Bruno Fischer in 1959
zdroj: Witness archive

Bruno Fischer was born on 30 August 1947 in Cheb into a German family. His father was hiding from total deployment at the end of the Second World War. After World War II, his parents did not have to be deported; his father was needed as a specialist in the chemical and metallurgical industries. From 1950, they lived in Habartov, where more Sudeten Germans stayed and worked in the mines. Because of their German origin, the parents‘ work opportunities worsened, and the family lived on the edge of poverty. In the 1960s, they wanted to move to the West, but they did not have the money. During the war, which he spent in the helicopter squadron in Klatovy, the witness experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. After his military service, he worked most of the years in the Sokolov brown coal mines, working his way up to a leading position even as a non-party member. After 1989, he became a guide, guiding mostly German tourists, among whom were also expelled compatriots. In 2023, he lived in Karlovy Vary. The memories of the witness were filmed and processed thanks to the financial support of the town of Cheb.