“Then I worked at a gloves workshop in Přebuz; there were soldiers stationed there, and my uncle still had a pub. He was just the administrator, it didn’t belong to him any more. They took it from him. I can see it as if it was today, one time my boss from the factory came and said: ‘What’re you thinking, you’re at home, it’s a work day.’ I said: ‘It’s a bank holiday.’ He retorted: ‘Not here it isn’t, get to work right now!’ So I took my bike and rode to the crossroads, where my uncle was standing with my future husband. He said: ‘Come here, come here. This is my niece.’ But we couldn’t understand each other at all. My uncle had been in Russia during the war, so he’d learnt a bit of Russian. We spoke some German, some Czech, some Russian, and then my husband said: ‘Do you speak English?’ I said: Yes, I do.’ So then we spoke English together. My uncle and the others went off, and I had to go to work. But we met again. The [cab] driver who lived next to us killed himself, and the house was empty. My husband didn’t have any place to live in Přebuz. The [town’s national] committee told him he could take the house. He probably brought his own bed, I can’t remember how it was exactly. And when you’re neighbours, things are easy... [Q: Did you continue to speak English together?] Several years. Then some Communists came and said: ‘How come this German speaks English? And they locked my husband up for four months. He was a member of the committee in Přebuz, which had a lot of gendarmes, they helped him. They said he was one of [theirs], and so he was released.”
“Back then we German women had to do every type of job. I worked in a clothes factory, it was in Vysoká Pec and in Jelení. We had to go there by bike every day. It was hard sweat. Then I worked at the mine in Přebuz for some time, with Dad and Granddad, and they showed me the tools, the ores, and so on. I learnt everything. Then they talked me into taking charge of the material warehouse. When I worked down at the Škoda Works and they saw I knew my metals, they put me in charge of the all metallurgical material. Dad was there as well, so I had support. They helped me, explained everything to me and taught me.”
Edeltraud Rojíková, née Pichl, was born on 26 January 1928 in Přebuz, a mining village on the Czech-German border, as the only child of the German couple of Franz Pichl, a steiger [mining supervisor], and Marie Pichl, a bobbin-lace expert. During the war she studied pedagogics at the Lehrerbildunganstalt in Cheb, but the war ended before she could graduate. As a German, she was not given any further opportunity to study. The family was not included in the expulsion of Germans, because of their professional expertise, and so they stayed in Přebuz, among the cheerless Czech-German relations of the post-war border regions. The witness was employed as an assistant seamstress, a sewer, and later as a warehouse worker at the North Bohemian Ore Mines in Přebuz. Shortly after the war she met her future husband Karel Rojík, a member of the Czechoslovak foreign resistance. Despite all the language and cultural barriers, they were permitted to marry in 1949. In 1950, after numerous applications, Edeltraud Rojíková regained her Czechoslovak citizenship. With production slowing at the Přebuz mines, the whole family moved to the newly established branch of the Škoda Works in the former Rotava Ironworks in Rotava. The witness became a metallurgical material supplier at Škoda Rotava. She never joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but she was always publically active, and she promoted the ideals of humanism. She was a member of the Cultural Society of Citizens of German Nationality in the CSSR, of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters, and she founded the Heimatchor choir. She received several awards for her activities. Her two children continue in her footsteps. She died on 29 July 2014 in Rotava.
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