“They were Czech. They had been locked up because as boys they... they studied physics and they wanted... they did something, blow up a bridge or something like that. So they would lock up these boys as a punishment. And they had to work in Jáchymov mines. And one of them spoke to Pepík, as Pepík – my husband – knew Czech. And every time he would give him a letter. And my husband would send the letter... to their parents. So we would meet. They would come here and we went to Jičín. For many years. And after that, near the end... he died of lung cancer back then. And they had been living there... near Jáchymov, in that prison, that labor camp up there. Between Jáchymov and Ostrov. So they would come and bring something and my husband would take a can acting like that he had tea in it or something and there was food in it and he would give it to them. Which was also dangerous, dangerous indeed. But they didn't find out. Oh no, they didn't.”
“They just wanted to shoot my grandfather. He was a gamekeeper living in Mílov, my father's father, and they had to hand in their guns. And he refused to hand in the gun. It had been in the Boží Dar jurisdiction. And he didn't hand over the gun. And there was this good friend of his living next door. And he said: 'I won't be going all the way up, I would just hide it into a pipe.' So he hid it into a pipe and this friend of his, a gamekeeper, had turned him in. And policemen came asking him where the gun was and he kept telling them that he had no gun. So they went to the pipe and took it out and he had to dig a hole in front of his house so they would shoot him. And they kept an eye on him. He was digging the hole and maybe it was intentional or.... He had to leave and he told the gamekeeper to guard him, so he would get the thing done. And my grandmother, he run away across the border, it was just a few steps away. Without a thing, she took nothing with her, and after a while the gamekeeper said: 'You know what, leave it and just run.' So he run away and when the soldier came back, they were gone. So later he had been punished severely as he didn't keep an eye on my grandfather. And grandfather didn't get far as he had a stroke and he died. And after that my grandmother had been living in the GRD for quite a long time. Near my cousin, my father's sister's daughter. She had been living there and she supported my grandmother to some degree. And after that she also died. It was close... that denunciation that they didn't hand in guns.”
“Two and a half kilometers to the German border, to Heidmaier, and six kilometers to Potůčky. We were all German, Luhy and the other settlements, all German. Well and my mother was... But later she got married, becoming Protzová, and had been working at the forest enterprise. And my father, he died in the war in 1941. He was a butcher so later he had been serving in a kitchen as a butcher, but they got hit and he was wounded, he lost both his legs. He lived for three more days and then he died. After that they sent a message to my mother and just the three of us had been living in Háje since then. And after that as there was this expulsion, everyone had to leave and after that we... The forest enterprise, some superior came and we had to go back together with the Kraus family. As they found out that they didn't have enough people in the forest enterprise. My mother used to pull wood with horses and there was no one to feed them. So we came back and the second family had to go somewhere between Poůčky and Horní Blatná. So after that we had returned to our house no. 14. And we had goats, chicken, rabbits, and cows were gone. The stable door was open and they had been serving themselves. So everything was still ready when we came. The rest of the houses were half-empty. As a car would come, they would open the house and load something up. Where did it go... To Polůčky for sure.”
Elfrieda Lehnertová, née Protz, was born on March 14th 1938 in the village of Háje (called Zwittermuehl back then) in the Ore Mountains (Krušné hory) region as the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Protz. She has been of German descent, as well as the majority of the residents of the north-western part of Bohemia at that time. Her father, Ernst Protz, joined the Czechoslovak Army during the 1938 mobilisation. After Iron Ore Mountains region had been annexed by the German Reich, he had to join the German army and left for the Eastern front in 1941. He was killed the same year. Elfrieda grew up just with her mother and grandmother. At the end of the war the family had been deported from Háje to a detention camp in Nejdek where they had been waiting for to be expelled to Germany. After three days in the camp they were released and could return home. Her mother was needed in the forest where she had been working. They had been living in the devastated village till the late 1950s. Háje become part of the frontier zone. In 1957, Elfrieda Protzová married Josef Lehnert, a Czech German born in Teplice. His family had not been expelled and they were relocated from Teplice to Horní Blatná. Josef had been sent to work in Jáchymov uranium mines as a juvenile. After prisoner labour camps had been established in Jáchymov, he befriended two young inmates and after some time he started helping them. He had been carrying out letters to their families and brought them food. He had been sending letters to both prisoner‘s parents with his wife and they had been seeing them for years. Elfrieda Lehnertová had been working at a paper mill and after that at Triola Enterprise. She has one son, and she has been living in Horní Blatná a widow.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
