"The German boys were supposed to enlist to the Czech army. And they said, 'How can we shoot against our people?' Because they were to go to the border with weapons and guard the border against the Germans. When they were Germans themselves. So they didn't join the army, instead they fled to Austria. And then after the war, when they returned, they immediately arrested them all and they got some 20 years. So he did not return at all and remained in Germany. So we had never.... even Mom didn't see him.'
"But then when the Russians came, I won't forget it in my life, it was something, it was terrible, it was terrible. The first day, the father was in the meadow with the Russian maid, Marie, they were preparing the feeding, every day, for the cattle. There came a soldier, a Russian, on horseback and the girl had to immediately leave with the Russian soldiers, she was Ukrainian. I don't know what she must have experienced. They chased my father home, the one on the horse kept kicking him in the head with the iron one they had on their shoes, he came home covered in blood. So the girl begged the solider to stop. Because she worked for us. "-" She was from Carpathian Rutenia? "-" Yes. And she kept asking the Russian to let him, reminded them he was good, that she was so happy to work for us. He chased him to the living room, I still see the soldier entering the door on the horse. As a wild pig, how we say. It was horrible, father was bleeding and the girl was in tears she had to leave with the Russians."
"Gradually, they arrived, either they were transported with a car, or even the Czechs came with their suitcases and they could take the barracks they wanted. And the Germans had to go to one room in that room and they were only allowed to take 70 kg with them and there they had to wait until they were deported. Until that, they had to work for the Czech. But they were not only Czechs, they were also Romanian Czechs and all sorts of other nations. "
"And then communism began. Suddenly they started, it was a united agricultural cooperative first. The new settlers founded it in Rychnov. They also couldn't farm, those who came here. You know, no high-ranking person came here. Only poor people came here, take a house and farm. But they didn't know it, they didn't succeed. The harvest was bad, they didn't know how to do it. Only a few Czechs then had something from the farm. Especially those who were doing a scabbard there somewhere with the peasants in Bohemia. They knew how to farm. That's how they did it. But the others didn't do it, the farming. So they wanted to get rid of it. They set up a united team that they would put together. And they persuaded our father that he should join. But who would volunteer to join such an initiative? ”
Ema Kletzenbauerová, née Ziková, was born on November 16, 1931 in Rychnov nad Malší near Kaplice on the Czech-Austrian border. She came from a mixed marriage, her father was Czech, her mother German. The parents owned a thirteen-hectare farm and a tenement house in the village. In her hometown, the witness attended a German primary school and after graduating, she worked on her native farm. In 1951, she married Alois Kletzenbauer, with whom she had four children. Ema trained as a cook and worked in the school cafeteria. Emin‘s father Dominik Zika refused to join a unified agricultural cooperative, so the communists confiscated his property on the basis of Beneš‘s decrees, and later demolished the dilapidated houses in demolition. In the 1960s, she and her husband took part in the rescue of the statue of the Virgin Mary from the Svatý Kámen pilgrimage site. After the Velvet Revolution, a witness cooperated in organizing a meeting of German natives expelled after World War II. In 2020, Ema Kletzenbauerová lived in Rychnov nad Malší.
Maria Schnee am Hiltschnerberg, a smaller replica of the Our Lady of the Snows church at Svaty Kamen, built by expelled Germans in 1984 near Freistadt, Upper Austria
Maria Schnee am Hiltschnerberg, a smaller replica of the Our Lady of the Snows church at Svaty Kamen, built by expelled Germans in 1984 near Freistadt, Upper Austria
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