"One time an old locksmith came up to me and said, 'Hey, when you go down to the pump, get everything you need ready up here so you won't be there too long. When you get there, do it right away and get out of there.' Naively, I asked why. He said there was a lot of radiation there. I said I hadn't felt anything from the radiation yet. And he said, 'When you feel it, it'll be too late.' I was puzzled, and when I had to do something down there again, a geologist came trotting by with a Geiger counter. So I yelled at him to come to me, and he said he didn't have time. I said, 'Come over here now or I'll throw a hammer at you.' He comes over to me and says, 'What do you want?' And I said, 'Turn on the Geiger counter.' He turned it on and I saw the needle swing. He turned it right off and said, 'Get out of here, there's a lot of radiation.' I asked him how much it was, and he said 600 becquerels, and ran away."
"Three Soviet soldiers raided a miner's family's house. They locked the miner in the cellar and the three of them raped the lady and beat her quite badly in the face, she had black eyes and bruises. When they were gone, she went to the Soviet HQ and complained with the top commander. He asked if she would recognize them. She said she wasn't blind and would recognize them. So the whole platoon had to get in and he asked which ones they were. She looked and she pointed to three of them, this one and that one and that one. The three were immediately arrested by the Soviet MP and then it turned out that they were shot and buried in Jáchymov by the cemetery wall."
"A young Czech came from inland and had a permit to choose a house left after the deported Germans. He came my uncle's place and showed him the permit and told him in broken German that he was now the owner and that my uncle had to go away and be deported. The uncle took his rucksack and a few small things and went out, but he didn't leave; he went to the mine. He reported to his boss, a top Soviet officer, and said he couldn't come anymore because he had been kicked out of his house and had no place to live and so on. The officer told him to wait and called the Soviet military police. He told him to come with them and show them the way to his house. He did. My uncle took them there, and they went in and instructed the so-called owner, asking how he dared kick out a miner employed by the Soviet army, harass him, and ordered him to get out of the house immediately or they would shoot him. He objected that this applied only to Czechs, but they replied that it applied to miners and cocked an automatic rifle and said, 'Get out!' So he got out and went to complain to the National Committee and they said, 'How can you be so stupid? We told you that the miners were under the protection of the Soviet army, and you're making such nonsense. Be glad they didn't shoot you right away.'"
Herwig Schönfelder was born in Jáchymov on 24 December 1939 into a Sudeten German family. Although he was still a child, he remembered the post-war violence against the German citizens of the town. His family was deported because his father and uncle worked in the uranium mines in Jáchymov. The Soviet military police helped the uncle in saving his house from being seized by Czech settlers. For some time, the witness also worked in the mines under dangerous working conditions and without protective equipment. In August 1968, he became a direct witness of the arrival of the occupation army in Jáchymov. After one year, his parents decided to emigrate to West Germany. The witness was helping them to adapt their new apartment when the border was suddenly closed. He tried to relocate his own family to Germany but was not successful. After five years, his wife divorced him remotely. He was not reunited with his family and children until after the Velvet Revolution. In 2023 he was living in Bad Rodach, Germany, and came to Bohemia for regular visits.
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!
