Růžena Grubrová

“Some eastern as well as western Germans arrived here to the Olympie hotel; it was still during the communist regime. They exchanged their cars and documents and the eastern Germans drove off to Bavaria with the western car. Every time when western Germans were to come to stay in the hotel, you were scrutinized and you had to report them immediately and give a notice to the immigration authority. Here (in our guesthouse) we were already letting rooms for lodging at that time. One day some eastern Germans arrived, but there was one man from West Germany among them. But I didn’t know this. The reservation request was for eastern Germans. They have not even arrived and I already had the cops from Prachatice here. How is this possible, they asked. I told them that I did not know anything about anyone from West Germany. The Germans eventually arrived and as chance would have it, the one from West Germany turned out to be employed in some research institute for atomic energy. I had the cops here three times a day during that time. Or for instance, western Germans would arrive to the hotel and bring some Czech girls with them. The rooms were bugged. The cops would be sitting at the bar, drinking, and listening what the two were doing there. This was awful. I remember that one day one of the cops got so sloshed that he remained lying there under the table.”

“My father and my two uncles slaughtered some cattle. They buried the skin in the forest. However, the postman who was coming here saw them and he turned them in. There was a large peat bog here close to the weather observation station, and we would go there to make so called borka out of the peat, which we then used for heating. That day we were riding there with a cow wagon to dig some peat. They arrested dad there and took him to the police station in Stachy. It was on November 1st 1942. My sister was just one year old and I was eight. In the morning they brought him back home to change clothes. He had been so beaten and bruised everywhere that we could not recognize him. He got sentenced to fourteen months. One of the uncles was acquitted, but the other one was sentenced to two years in prison. Later they transported him somewhere to Germany and he died there.”

“We were liberated by the Americans here. Their commander was certain Mr. Myslivec, whose mother came from Klatovy. They were sitting here in the dining hall, my mom was cooking Czech meals for them and they were so happy. In exchange they were bringing us their rations, for example their excellent canned food. They hated to leave. Mr. Myslivec wanted to take my four-year-old sister with him. He was childless and he wanted my parents to give her to him. But she was daddy’s sweetheart, and nothing happened.”

“My husband was a gamekeeper. Sometime in 1988 or 1987, still under the totalitarian regime, there was a bark beetle plague. We were helping them process the wood. It first had to be sprayed before it was taken out of the forest. But there was no water and we needed to fetch the water from behind the wire fence. The border guards went with us and we were not allowed to say a single word. We drew some water and walked back. It was a terrible feeling when you saw the wire fence, and the soldiers. Terrible.”