Doris Remešová

“My father’s brother married well. He married a communist’s daughter. They had no problems with travelling. One of them brought a little wooden rabbit for my brother. I remember that it was a very nice toy, painted white with red spots and it had bakelite wheels. I was pulling the rabbit down the stairs and the wheels got broken. My dad then scolded me for breaking it – that’s the first thing I remember. And I got beaten once. That was when I got my first new shoes. I was wearing big warm shoes. I learnt Czech in the school in Opočno where I always walked up the hill from Podzámčí. I remember that one of the teachers was really nice. I didn’t have any problems with the other children. This teacher let me sit on her lap and she told the children: ´Children, this little girl will tell you how to say ´an egg.´ And I said ´Ei´ in German. But when my brother began going to school, he did have a problem; he was afraid and he was made to sit in the corner for punishment. And one time somebody called me a German rat and my brother got into a fight for me. We still have a very good relationship with my brother even now, but I think that he had suffered because of me more that he ought to have.”

“My brother was thought to have cancer and when he was in hospital and I went to see him, he had some time to talk to me. It was only then that he told me what he had learnt from our father. As they were at the Opočno railway station, sitting on the boxes with their property after they had been evicted, my dad and mom were contemplating suicide. All the people were gone and they were sitting there alone at the railway station. They didn’t know what to do. Two little children, emaciated grandma and expectant mother. They were looking at my little brother who was running around these wooden boxes and making faces at them. He would run around, come back and make a funny face. My father later told him: ´You have actually saved our lives.´”

“My father had shrapnel all over his body, even in his head. His genital area was affected the worst. He suffered injuries of his testicles and penis, the doctors had stitch him up and he has lost awfully lot of blood. But it was the Russians from a nearby house who gave him first aid. When Germans then came for him, he asked them to spare these Russians’ lives, because they had done everything in their power in order to save him. He was then taken to a field hospital where they sewed the wounds so well that even the doctors in Germany, where he was then recovering, praised the surgeons’ work.”

“My dad applied for emigration to Germany six times, but they never allowed him to leave. When he received the negative response for the sixth time, he asked the clerk who gave him the letter for the reason, and the lady said: ´We will not let such a good worker like you go to Germany.´”

“When we got off the train at the station in Opočno, local farmers came there to pick families who would work on their farms. But when the farmer who came for us – he was from Slavětín – saw what our family looked like… My mom was pregnant. We were evicted on 27th July, 1947. My sister was born in Opočno on 5th September. You can imagine how my mom looked. The farmer said: ´I will not feed so many hungry people.´ We were left at the railway station alone.”