In Kladsko, the Poles drove them out of their house and took all their possessions
Stáhnout obrázek
Karel Hauschke was born on 25 May 1940 in Německá Čermná in Kladsko. His first memories from his childhood date back to the Second World War. The only meeting with his father, who had enlisted in the Wehrmacht before he was born, took place in Lodz. There his father worked as a guard for French prisoners of war. But he never returned from the war. At the end of the war, the fleeing German army passed through their village and was soon replaced by Soviet soldiers. Soon new Polish settlers arrived and took all the Hauschke family‘s property. Their house also served as a transshipment point for smuggled goods and a gathering place for people who wanted to escape illegally to Czechoslovakia. Because they too had lost their home, they left for Czechoslovakia. At first they did not feel comfortable in Czech because many people looked upon them as hated Germans. Karel Hauschke discovered the magic of the Adršpach-Teplice rocks and climbing in the early 1960s. He became a legend, known even to the youngest generation of climbers as „Kokša“. In 1965 he emigrated to Germany. He built his own boat and ran cruises in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He circumnavigated the world several times with his ship. After fifty years abroad, he returned to the Czech Republic. In 2023 he lived in Náchod.
