Helena Šilhanová

“After 1945, when the war ended, my Dad was employed at the post office. And because the Germans were being deported from the border regions, they needed people there. They assigned my dad to the post office in Česká Lípa, where the postmistress was a German. She was to be deported, so we moved in there with Dad. The daughter of the postmistress was expecting a baby. They were Germans, they only spoke German, I felt terribly sorry for them. I was as old as you, I was fourteen at the time. They had to line up and go into those concentration camps. In the meantime she gave birth to her baby. I made friends with her, I was fourteen, she was twenty-one. They sent her to Česká Lípa, to the concentration camp, and I went to visit her there. The ones who guarded her said: ‘What are you doing here? You’re Czech, you’ve no business being here.’ I said: ‘I’m going to visit her, she has a baby.’ So I visited her, and she told me that there was a picture in the post office, where they lived, and that she had some money hidden behind it. And whether I could take the picture down and bring her the money.”

“Well, of course, it was terrible dangerous, you weren’t allowed to do that. Czechs were very resentful of them back then, six years of war, some people had had it rough... I was sorry for her, I was sorry for the baby, I wanted to help her out. So I really did find the picture, the money was there, in marks. And so I reckoned: ‘I’ll go visit her, and I’ll see how it works out.’ I took the money and went into the camp again. And they asked: ‘What’re you doing here again?’ I said: ‘I’m visiting again.’ ‘Do you know you’re not allowed here?’ ‘Yeah, I know, I’m going to check on the baby.’ I met up with the lady and brought her the money. She had the baby with her, of course, she put the marks into the swaddling clothes next to the baby. So at least she had something to start out with, in Germany, a bit of money at least. That was my girlish experience that not all Germans were evil.”