"Dad came, took the train to Tanvald and walked here from Tanvald. We didn't know he was coming that day, we didn't know at all. I was just on a blueberry picking trip, it was in the summer, I came back. We lived in a house like that, but down the row. We only had these two rooms, and the Czechs were already living in the other half. I came from the blueberries down here from Studenov. I'd come down the hill and suddenly somebody would stand in front of me, a gentleman, and it was my father. He already knew, I was taking pictures, I had a little old camera even then. He already knew which house we lived in. He knocked, but nobody opened, so he went up the little bit where he could see the house, and he wanted to wait for somebody to open, for somebody to come. I recognized him and he recognized me after all these years."
"I was weaving there [in Franz Haney's weaving mill] and then, in '48, I suddenly got this order: 'Start work on April 8, FIFA youth, brickyard in Studenets. Whoever doesn't start, 100,000 fine or a year in jail. Signed Edvard Beneš, President of the Republic.' So I was then in the brickyard. In 1948 and then again in 1949. And all the Germans who were still there had to go to Studenec to the brickyard. That was the old brickyard and Fifa Youth was a factory upstairs, they needed to build maybe a big hall there for the material, to make bricks, it took from April to November. You couldn't make bricks in the winter. In the forty-eight and forty-nine."
"No matter, it was all good then, international, you didn't know if it was German or Czech, they knew perfect German and Czech too. For example, they sent children from here to there to learn Czech and from there they sent children here to learn German. That was really... I don't know, I wasn't born then. Anyway, then Hitler. Hitler, he was a fanatic, of course, he wanted the whole world to be German, he was crazy. The assassination attempt, how they tried to kill him, it didn't work. That was in '44, before the war ended. It would have been good if it had ended a little sooner, and no, he fought to the last soldier. Does this even make sense? The war was simply lost then, then they could do whatever they wanted with the Germans here, of course. But that it would turn out like this, that they would have to leave everything here... nobody knew it would be so harsh for the Germans."
"There was a man named Hnyk, Franta Hnyk. He was a good guy. He was a Czech. I didn't know him then. It was during the war, I was standing by the bridge with some guys and he came and asked if he could jump. I told him, 'You don't have to ask, it's a given.' He spoke German. 'It's a given, I'm glad somebody came.' So he jumped here. And then right after the war, he said to me, 'You can jump right away too, and nobody here will mind. You let me jump during the war and now you can jump here after the war. So I jumped here after the war, right after the war there were competitions, in '45-'46."
Kurt Gernert was born on 12th January 1930 into a German family living for generations in Rokytnice nad Jizerou. He went to a German primary school and his classmates were of German nationality like him. When over three million Sudeten Germans became residents of the Greater German Reich after the annexation of the border areas, it was a signal of hope for some of them that they could have their own nation and country. Not everyone saw it that way. Kurt Gernert avoided conscription into the German army because of his age and weak physical constitution. His brother and father were not so lucky. His brother ended up in American captivity, his father in Russian, fighting for survival in the Siberian forests. The war split the family apart. Mother and Kurt stayed in Rokytnice, avoiding the post-war displacement. His brother remained in emigration after the war and the father of the witness returned secretly to Rokytnice after nine long years. In 1953 he was able to stay with his family. All his life, he worked in the textile factories of his hometown. In 1948 and again in 1949 he was called by President Edvard Beneš to work in a brick factory with other Germans. If he had refused, he was threatened with a fine or imprisonment. He married in 1958, has a son and a daughter, and was widowed 45 years ago. In the summer of 2023 he lived in Rokytnice nad Jizerou. He died in 2024.
Common photo of jumpers from competitions in Rokytnice nad Jizerou - No. 31 Fanda Hnyk, No. 35 Kurt Gernert, No. 33 Šalda from Vysoké, No. 30 jumper from Jablonec nad Jizerou, 50s
Common photo of jumpers from competitions in Rokytnice nad Jizerou - No. 31 Fanda Hnyk, No. 35 Kurt Gernert, No. 33 Šalda from Vysoké, No. 30 jumper from Jablonec nad Jizerou, 50s
