Margita Beranová

“It was the way, that if they knew that they belonged to the SS, they shot them straight away at the playground. I know it from my father. And they intended to hand over the rest to the Russians. But they planned to do it somewhere in Moldova. So the march went on there. Who didn’t make it got shot on the way. For real. Just like the Germans did; exactly the same they did during war. But then they came and the Russians refused them. So they had to go back to Záluží. In Záluží they worked and were accommodated. My mum went twice on foot from Chomutov to Záluží, as a German she had a white tape and could not take a bus or a train or anything. So she went on foot bringing food to daddy, somehow threw it over the fence. And then his father was running the errands to prove daddy was actually anti- fascist, altogether daddy stayed there for three or four months, before it got processed and they let him go. But others stayed even longer. So I say it the way it actually was back then.”

“So it was, that in the year 1948 the parents of my father left, as they were both Czech. So they went exactly to those countries. And right in front of that village there were barriers. Here was the Sudetenland and there was the Protectorate. So I used to meet up my granny and grandpa at the bars. I was standing on one side and granny and grandpa on the other side and we had a chat over the bars in fact.”