Johann Eppinger

In 1945 as s nine-year-old I went to my First Holy Communion at the church of St. Jacob in Prachatice. Back then the church was already closed, but we were still allowed inside through the rear entrance. There was still a German parish priest there and we were given our Holy Communion. We had to go into the church in our slippers so as not to make a noise and upset the authorities. That’s how I got my First Communion. There was a back entrance which all the German kids had to go through for Communion, that was in May. The priest at the time called it in and he said he had authorization, I don’t know. We had to go in through the back entrance and be completely quiet. For us children it was difficult not to say anything at our First Communion. It was over quickly and in half an hour we were outside again. That’s my memory of the last days in 1945. Because no mass was celebrated after that.

On 3 March 1946 we were given the command to come to Prachatice station at 2 pm with 50 kg of luggage and 1000 Reichsmarks with us. And on that square in Prachatice was the concentration camp for Prachatice and the surrounding area, and we were moved into cattle cars. Inside there was straw, everyone got into the cattle car and we started out that night. Each wagon was full of a lot of old people, all the young ones had gone off to the war of course, there were just children and old people. And out of grief and despair many cried the whole night. They did feed us I have to say, they gave us warm soup. We travelled by night and stood still by day. But we weren’t allowed out of the wagons. There were police officers with dogs outside to stop us from escaping. And so we went all the way through Prague to Furth im Wald. The older people were looking out of a hole in the wagon and rejoicing: “To Prague – thank God we’re not going to Siberia, we’re going in the direction of Pilsen and West Germany.” And a cheer went up throughout the train even in the middle of that disaster and misery it was a good thing to be heading to Germany. That’s something I still remember well. Some people also died in that train. And the next station the train always stopped and those people were taken out, but we didn’t see that as children.