Ing. Erika Lischková

"It simply came to my notice then that all these people thought this was normal. My husband, as an only child, inherited a large house in Bohušovice, and what to do with a house in Bohušovice? So, we managed to buy a villa in Klíš, and there were the only ones, who built it during the First Republic, and otherwise it was all the just confiscated. And they all thought it was normal. And then when we became a little bit more friendly and came there to visit, we saw the lovely furniture of the Germans made of carved wood, and no one thought it was strange. And especially not their children."

"So, they [ČSAD] really considered him highly and then arranged even my father´s funeral and took care of my mother, who could just speak German, they arranged a cleaning job in the pharmacy on the square in Děčín. But she, like a proper German, was insanely clean, she worked really hard. It was still semi-private and there was a busy grandfather of the pharmacist who had to rub the ointments. And she always said, 'Mr. Rose, go get some rest,' and rubbed ointments too. The pharmacy in the hospital on the hill had to get a supply from the square, so my mother took a ladder, loaded Malaga wine up on it, it was drunk as medical, mineral water, it was all brought to the hospital. She did it all. And the masters, who were working there, suddenly remembered their school German, and started speaking German with her."

"It must have been in August 1945, my mother was practically completely alone in the apartment building, where there were two or three apartments above each other. We always blocked the entrance a lot, because various guards were still breaking into the houses, maybe even looting. They managed to break it. My mother, who could not speak any Czech at all, she was not able to stand up to them, and they told her to take a sheet, and pack all she had up to 50 kilos, I think. So, my mother wrapped something up, probably talked to me indiscriminately, and so on, I was about six, so there was much fear. They simply picked us up to a kind of a truck and took us to the assembly point of the Germans, who were then destined for further deportations to the arrived trains, and it was already known. And those trains were just departing from the Děčín-Východ railway station and practically running before the eyes of the front of our houses."

"She [family acquaintance] took me to a village, where there were Czech relatives. It was near Úštěk nad Litoměřicemi, where I spent a part of May, June, July, August, mid-September. Only Czechs lived there and so I learned Czech. But it was also an amazing experience for me, it was a childhood change. In the village, the children had to help, they had to bring snacks to the fields, they had to collect spikelets, they had to knock out poppies. We got even drunk meanwhile. We had to pound butter, whose, taking turns with those, who could no longer work, because it was hard. We collected burdock leaves, then packed butter for market sale. Well, I came back and I could actually speak Czech, except for only a few words."