“And then the musicians came, and people had bunches of birch branches because there weren’t enough flowers, and everyone welcomed the liberated Frenchmen, some even wanted to kiss them, and music played to greet them - it gave my goose bumps! Drinks were brought for refreshment, to welcome them in France, you know.”
“There were thousands [of people - ed.]! And they said they’d take us to Magdeburg and Kiel. Such a gnashing of teeth. People cried - we were still children! Girls weren’t like they are now, it was completely different. And so the Czech Red Cross took us in at eight o’clock - Czechs, but also Germans, it was mixed. And they gave us each half a kilo of sausages, I remember that, roasting sausages - and we all got those from the Red Cross. And that we shouldn’t cry.”
“... you understand - we had to be very careful. And one time, on a Wednesday: ‘Raus, schnell! Schnell!’ Ein Chaos in the street. And [our - ed.] caretaker, Mr Kratina, asked: ‘What’s going on, eh, people?’ I was still in my nightie with my curlers on, and they came and bashed on the door, but they didn’t know I was staying with a Czech girl who’d married a German. Those were called traitors, who’d joined the Gestapo, mainly her husband. Some people joined them out of poverty, true, like one man from Černovice here, Mr Vínický, he was out of a job, so he joined them out of opportunism. Oh, there were many opportunists! And [my friend - ed.] explained the situation, that we’re decent girls, and he [the Gestapo officer - ed.] wanted to see our work books. And that we have to come pick them up at two o’clock in Goat’s Place in Prague, there was a big hall there, where they gathered up, well, and we came there - Cilka and I - they told us we’re assigned to labour in Germany.”
Růžena Carpeza Ptáčková was born on 21 September 1921 in southern Bohemia. She left her home as a young girl to work in a delicatessen in Prague. As others born in 1921, she too was assigned to forced labour in the Reich. She worked in a factory canteen and could thus support her colleagues or POWs, among whom she found her future husband, a French soldier captured on the Maginot Line. After the war she followed her fiancé to his homeland, where they married. She and her husband Georges Carpeza opened a grocery shop. She lived in France for 75 years. She returned to the Czech Republic after her husband’s death; she lives in Černovice near Tábor. She gave birth to two sons, one of them was handicapped - she cared for him until his death - the other son died tragically at the age of twenty-six.
