I like to return to my native Kaplice, but I already consider Austria my home
Margaretha Hecht was born on 7 July 1935 in Kaplice, South Bohemia, as the first child of Karl and Maria Ruschak, German grocery store owners. Kaplice had a predominantly German-speaking population, but the children played together with the few Czech children. In 1938, the people of Kaplice welcomed the arrival of the German army with enthusiasm, and Margaretha´s mother Marie was one of the few who were clearly against it. Her father left for the German army in 1942, serving as a medic first in France, then in Russia and finally in Warsaw, from where he was evacuated by air to Czechoslovakia. He was released from the prison camp in Karlovy Vary to Austria, where his family had relatives and friends. In November 1945, his mother and her children and grandparents also made it to Austria, and the family lived in one room on a farm in the tiny village of Scharten near Eferding. Both parents worked on the farm at first, and later the father found work in Wels near Linz, where the family settled after four years. Here, Margaretha Hecht attended the business academy and became a stenotypist at Knorr. Later she worked in this company as assistant to the head of the marketing department. She married in 1961 and adopted her only child in 1969. She first came to Kaplice at the end of the 1950s, when she and her parents acquired Austrian citizenship. The first return was sad and painful, but later she realized that those who went to Austria had a better life than those who stayed in Czechoslovakia. She returned to Kaplice often and gladly, even though she considered Austria her home.