Ivana Reichlová

“Quite abruptly, I came to realise many things. Firstly, because me and my husband discussed them, but secondly because I had an almost unlimited access to books where I got my facts from. Finally, I was able to satisfy this incredible lust for knowledge and facts regarding the actual state of things. And it was only up to me to look at the times we were living in and make sense of the current development.”

“Judging by my grandmother’s life in the midst of her loved ones, she didn’t seem to bear any grudge after the war. On the other end, when they did mention the war, it must have been tough. People were really poor, and my mom used to say that it was really bad when they were growing up, they were starving, and grandmother and grandfather showed great perseverance in the struggle to survive the war. Grandma had many siblings, but because she married a Czech man, she was allowed to stay in Cvikov where they were living at the time. Her siblings were forced to leave though in the postwar expulsion. It wasn’t a death march like the one from Brno to Germany, but it was very sad. They were only allowed to take a fragment of their possessions and some stretches of the journey must have been particularly bad as people didn’t treat them nicely.”