Each class began and ended with a loud cry of Heil Hitler!
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Alžběta Bürgerová was born on 4 October 1929 into a modest Czech family of Peter Draxler, a bricklayer, and Alžběta Draxlerová (née Dušková) in the isolated settlement of Včelíny. Včelíny is located right between the villages of Věžovatá Pláně and Zubčice to this day. Until 1938, she attended the Czech school in nearby Věžovaté Pláně. Although Včelíny was officially part of the Czech municipality of Zubčice, it was annexed to Věžovatá Pláně that was part of the Sudetenland due to pressure from the local German neighbours following the Munich Agreement. Since the latter half of the 1930s, the family had been experiencing hostile and contemptuous behaviour of their German neighbours, which peaked with the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938. As a German citizen, she was then no longer allowed to attend a Czech school and had to go to a German school in Věžová Pláně even though she neither spoke nor understood German. As a Czech in a German school, she faced rude and hateful behaviour, humiliation and ridicule from her German classmates and teacher. She suffered a nervous breakdown after a few months and stopped going to school. The Draxlers did not feel safe in the German environment. A German-Czech couple lived in nearby Zlatá Koruna and in turn were not comfortable in the Czech environment. They made an agreement and changed their residence. The Draxlers then stayed permanently in Zlatá Koruna. After the war, Alžběta Bürgerová graduated from a business school and worked in various office jobs all her life. From the 1960s on, she worked at the District National Committee (ONV). It was also around this time that she joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, of which she is still a member (2023). In the 1970s, she worked as the head of the People’s Audit Committee (“VLK”) and graduated from VUML. At the time of the interview (2023), she lived in Český Krumlov.
