Ewald Hannabach

"The Wehrmacht came to Luby in 1938. Luby is situated on the road connecting Kraslice and Falkenau, and that's where German tanks came from. We counted them; 400 tanks came through. The Wehrmacht set up camp in Luby and held exercises on the playing field. The German army occupied everything. They occupied the Sudetenland. There was an agreement beforehand as to how far the territory would extend."

"Yes, there was a camp in the barracks by the upper gate, which no longer exists, and then a camp in the old monastery; from there, transports were heading west to Bavaria. In those days, there was a doctor in every monastery. Dr. Mödler who also served in the Wehrmacht and was my godfather was on medical duty in the old monastery in Cheb. Then something happened that I still can't quite grasp. We spent the first night in the barracks in steel beds. The next day we young men had to peel potatoes. The next evening, our parents said, we need to move. We dragged all the luggage from the first floor across the well-lit barrack plaza, but there was no foot traffic, no checks. The gate was open, and there was a horse-drawn carriage ready outside the gate, and we loaded all our luggage onto it and had it taken to the old monastery. There, too, nobody checked us, all the doors were open. So from then on, we were in the old monastery to await our resettlement to Bavaria. My godfather probably arranged all this."

"Then came the eviction. My uncle and my schoolmate with mother moved out along with us. We received a letter telling us to come to this area in Luby with thirty kilograms of luggage, so that we could be taken to the collection camp in Cheb. We were to appear there in the morning. Strangely enough, my maternal grandmother was also deported together with us. We were not allowed to take any furniture with us, and she was very old. So we took a small stool that my grandfather had once made for her in Vienna, and my grandmother always sat on it. No one even noticed we actually had a piece of furniture with us. It took quite a long time before we were taken to Cheb; it got dark in the meantime. In Cheb, we had to get in front of the barracks by the upper gate and everything was checked, but the guys on duty were tired after a long day and they were also bribed, most likely with alcohol. They stepped on the scales and let everything pass even though my mother had packed more than thirty kilos. There was a catch to the whole thing. There was a camp for displaced persons in the barracks, who were then sent to the Russian zone in Germany, but nobody wanted to go there."