"He was always summoned to Lanškroun. Nová Ves belonged under the military administration in Lanškroun. And he didn't go, because Lanškroun was far from Nuremberg. And then he was summoned in Nuremberg and he said that he had thought he didn't have to go to the army because he came from a mixed marriage, so he didn't go. They ruled that since he lived in the Sudeten, he had to go. So he was a soldier and he was in France and Italy, and he returned from Italy on foot. He lost an eye when he was in France. As children, we played with lime. We put unslaked lime in bottles and poured water in. Those were the old lemonade bottles with the patented tops. And the bottle burst. It didn't blow up at first, so my brother grabbed it, and as he moved it, the bottle shattered. And the boiling lime hit us in the face. And my brother had a scar in his eye from that. When he was in France, he had inflammation of the iris, and they took his eye away lest it affect his other eye as well."
"German soldiers launched a disc mine, and a lady was injured and a little boy lay dead. So Mrs. Dušková with the landlady went there, pulled the lady in the house and covered her with a blanket. And then the lady died in the house. She was from somewhere around Krnov or so."
"My mother swore at Hitler, really. Ever since. She hated him outright. The teacher at school told us to have a picture of Hitler everywhere. There was a little picture on the wall above the window, so I slipped Hitler in. But mum took him away as soon as I did. She used to swear at Hitler so much."
"Freikorps threw some grenades at the finance department (customs office) in 1938. There was shooting so we feared what would happen. It was at night, so we just heard it happening." Interviewer's question: "Did anyone die there then?" Answer: "I don't think so. They said one soldier was hurt and one guardsman lost an eye, but I don't know, that's just what the rumours said."
Hildegard Zemanová, née Morávková, was born in 1926 in Nová Ves (Neudorf), nowadays a part of Bartošovice v Orlických horách, to parents of mixed nationalities. Her mother Anna was German and her father Josef was Czech. Both parents faced many problems due to their nationalities; her father as a Czech in German borderland in the late 1930s and during the war, and her mother as a German during the early years after the war. Their two daughters (the witness‘ sisters) had their husbands killed as members of the Wehrmacht and, as Germans they were to be transferred to Germany. They stayed in Czechoslovakia because their father was Czech, but they lost most of their property. Their brother Josef had to join the Wehrmacht during the war and was involved in war in France and Italy as a paramedic. In May 1945, the family witnessed what was referred to as the „national court“ in Nová Ves, where at least eleven people in the village were sentenced to death within a very short time span. Having completed her education during the war, Hildegard Zemanová worked the mandatory one year in agriculture at a farm in České Petrovice and then worked at a shop in Králíky. She married Czech Josef Zeman in 1950 and stayed in Králíky.
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!
