"All I know is that I was given new winter boots and there was a girl in the partisan family who was in the same class. Can you imagine what it was like when I was ten years old and saw that girl wearing my boots? I started crying so hard at school. And then they locked me in the coal cellar because I was crying so much. You have to imagine that when you see it as a child. They took them (my shoes) and the girl took them to school the next day proudly."
"Then my father went to get a Czech and told him we had to leave right away. And that the owner, who owned the house and who had actually taken it, said that we were not allowed to take anything with us. And that was Mr. Stach (whom my father brought), he was not popular with the other people. But we could not complain about him. And he said that our family, because winter is coming, everybody needed a duvet and the man needed a warm coat. And shoes for the kids, for me as a daughter. I was just a child then, I was ten years old. And the child also needed warm boots. And he allowed it all, we were allowed to take 70 kilos per person. But then we had to leave the apartment within two hours. What was I thinking? I went to my room to get my dolls, I had three dolls, a big ones and a small one, and I packed them all in my backpack, and that was my property, that was what I took with me. And my parents let me do it. I was actually well protected. Then we had to gather in the square. And then again, everything we had was searched, all the boxes, to see if there was anything valuable or expensive. Musical instruments were in great demand. We had nothing. And then we had to wait until the next day before our car (left) for Karlovy Vary. I think that still exists today, that place, they used to hold horse races there. And there were so many houses, stone houses, and that's where they accommodated us."
"I would like to emphasize that I don't feel any hatred when I take the bus there. On the contrary, I made a lot of friends there. The mayors are very good. For example, Jan Hůzl or Martin Mareček, who always writes me a card for Christmas or my birthday. And of course I write him back. And I'd like to keep doing that as long as possible. As long as I have strength left, I want to keep going there. If someone asks me, "Where have you been again? I answer - I've been at home. I was at home. It's still my home. A lot of people don't understand, but I don't care."
Magdalena Geissler was born on 10 October 1935 into a poor German family in Hroznětín in the Karlovy Vary region, then Lichtenstadt. Until the war, there was a significant Jewish community in the village, but the holocaust ended its existence. The synagogue was damaged during the war and then demolished during the communist regime, but Magdalena Geissler still has vivid memories of it. She also remembers the prisoners of war who were forced to work, the death marches from the concentration camps that passed through the village at the end of the war, the train with wounded German soldiers and the wave of refugees from Silesia. After the war and the departure of the Red Army from Hroznětín, Czech “partisans” ruled the village. Little Magdalena was one of those privileged German children who were allowed to go to school for a year after the war. However, the lessons were in Czech, which was unfamiliar to them, and the teachers had it in for them. Magdalena and her family were expelled in September 1946 after a stay in the Karlovy Vary detention camp. For ten years they lived in the wooden houses of the former Hagenau camp. Magdalena Geissler still lives in the housing estate that was built on the site of the camp. Since the 1980s, she has been regularly visiting Hroznětín, promoting understanding between the current inhabitants and the German natives of the village.
