"The Germans were getting to know each other. It was no problem. There were German girls and a couple of German boys. A gramophone was made, you could find records in the old houses. The people who came there, for example from Haná region, searched everything, took the best, but the rest stayed there. Who would want such records? So young people took it, Germans who also wanted to dance a little. We weren't allowed to go to a ball or anything like that. I already had a serious relationship with my husband, and one day he says to me, 'Come on, there's a ball, but it's a Communist ball.' So we said we'll try anyway - and we went there. We'd barely danced once or twice before a guy came up and said we couldn't be there and had to leave the hall immediately. So we left. What could we do?"
"The old people and the women and children stayed there (in the playground) and then were taken to the carriages at the station. They had already prepared wagons without roofs. Just imagine. Women with small children, they crammed them all in there and took them away at night. And they put us in this camp, a former Jewish camp. There were windows, and we could see the train station. We saw how they loaded the people and how they took them away. We were all crying. It wasn't that easy. We wanted to leave too, but they kept us there. We had to stay there and that was it."
"They threw us all out of the houses. The Czech soldiers came to each house and told us that we had to leave and take our things with us for three days. And we're all supposed to be on what they call the Spielplatz? In Bruntal, on the playground. So that's where they all had to meet. People with children, old people, young people, everybody. They had it all written down on slips, who they were going to keep, who were going to be transfer to Germany. They had it all ready. Everything. Even the people they're going to keep. They had it all sorted out. So they threw us out and we couldn't even get into our house. Nothing. So we couldn't imagine. Oh, my God, we can't get into our house? Nobody can imagine that's the way it is, and that's the way it was. They had us all together in that playground, so they sorted it out. They put the women with children and the old people on one side, the people who could work and were still brave on that side. So they divided it up. And they took us, the people who could work, right from there to the Jewish house where the Jews were during Germany, the young girls, and they worked in the weaving mill. And that was owned by Machold, who owned the factory, and then they moved us in."
"A friend of mine was just over and my mom was like, 'Oh my gosh! Russen, Russen kommen, Russen kommen! Oh my God!' She was so unhappy. And us girls there! Oh, for God's sake. Let's go to the hayloft, let's go to the hayloft! And hide ourselves! So we covered ourselves along the roof below, completely, completely covered ourselves, just so they wouldn't find us. Oh, my God! Then we heard the guys come in and look at everything. They were poking the hay. Jesus Christ, we were scared. We were so scared. And then they cooked with my mother. They made rice, they had options. They had meat. They made rice and meat for all the soldiers. Then they gave it out, carried it out in these pots. But my mother, she sat in the kitchen at the table. The commander kept telling her, 'You're supposed to go to sleep, go to sleep.' She's supposed to go to sleep, but Mom was just, 'Nein, nein.' She just stayed at the table and just kept nodding off. And there was no light. There was only a candle on the table. The light was off. And then the next day they went away."
Edeltraud Riedel was born Kindermann on 27 October 1929 in a German family in Bruntál, Czechoslovakia. After the Munich crisis in 1938 and the annexation of the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany, they became citizens of the Third Reich. Her father had to enlist in the Wehrmacht. He served as a medic on the Italian front. After the war he stayed in Austria and the marriage broke up. Edeltraud and her mother were expelled from their home by Czech soldiers after the liberation. They belonged to the minority of the undeported Germans of Bruntál. They spent several months in an internment camp for Germans. They saw the first transports leaving with other Germans who had been deported to Germany. After Bruntál was resettled by Czechs, they had to go to Vysočina and work there in agriculture. While still in Bruntál, she met her future husband Adolf Riedel. As she became pregnant, she was given permission to marry and was able to move to the Přerov region. There she worked in a limestone quarry. At the beginning of the 1960s she returned to the borderlands with her husband and sons. They bought a house in Karlovice in the Bruntál region. She worked in the New Materials Pressing Plant in Vrbno pod Pradědem and in a woodworking factory. In 2024 she lived in Karlovice.
Rudi (centre), the maternal uncle of the witness , who was killed in the Wehrmacht uniform in Crimea / his older brother also died in Russia / World War II
Rudi (centre), the maternal uncle of the witness , who was killed in the Wehrmacht uniform in Crimea / his older brother also died in Russia / World War II
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!
