"It was the soldiers banging on the door and ordering us to pack up and get out immediately. I remember something else that happened shortly before that. My mother had anticipated this situation. And I have a memory that she invited some cronies and they got drunk, they wanted to get rid of their fear. And I thought it was funny, I thought it was like New Year's Eve or a carnival, and I wanted to join in and I threw a lady's shoe out the window. And then there was a shot, and there was a sniper in the opposite house. Then I was dragged away from the window, I remember that too."
"Then we came to Velvary, to the hospital. It still exists today, but I think it has changed its character somewhat in the sense that it is now also a kind of convalescent home. Back then it was a kind of psychiatric ward with care for the dying and the sick. All sorts of people with serious problems were accommodated there: drug addicts, the feeble-minded, the elderly, the dying. There were no children, but I didn't miss them. I became friends with some of the inmates, they were happy to have a child there. It's a little unclear to me what I remember myself and what I know from hearsay. My mother told me that one of them saw himself as my patient, my first patient, so to speak. An addict who said he couldn't do without my company or he would relapse. Because my mother didn't want me to be with him so often, she was understandably afraid of what might happen."
"That is one of the most unpleasant memories I have. Not only because it lasted so long, it was so hot and I couldn't hold my mother's hand, she had her luggage in her hand and I was afraid she would get lost. There was a screaming and shouting crowd on the edge of the road, shouting: 'Death to the Germans! Death to the Germans!', they threw stones and some even physically assaulted them. I didn't understand, I just knew I had to hold on. It must have lasted all day, I think it was still morning when we left, and we arrived at Strahov when it was already dark. I only see one gate in front of me, it was quite small for the large crowd that was about to pass through, and we squeezed through it. That is also the moment that I remember physically. And then we fell with relief on the grassy ground in the middle. We spent our first night there, we weren't cold, but there were no blankets, we slept on our coats."
Brigitte Halewitsch was born on 21 April 1940 in Moravská Ostrava to parents Elisabeth Ludmila and Karl Rust. She spent a significant part of her childhood travelling, so she never felt at home anywhere. She came from a Czech-German family, but after the end of the war her partly Czech origins were not recognized, and so, like many other Germans, she and her mother were interned in the Strahov camp in Prague. Afterwards, her mother was forced to work on farms and in clinics, and Brigitte accompanied her in this work. In the summer of 1946, Elisabeth Rust and Brigitte, hidden under a wall of suitcases, fled by train to Bavaria. In Giessen they met Brigitte’s father, who had spent most of the war as a soldier in Poland. Brigitte wanted to become a psychoanalyst, which in retrospect forced her to come to terms with her and her family’s past. She graduated in 1971 with a doctorate in medicine. Even with her professional career, she knows that it is necessary not only to come to terms with this history, but also to share it. After the Prague Spring, she tried to find people in Prague who could listen and believe her story. But the youth did not believe her about what happened at Strahov and afterwards, and older people advised her not to talk about it. At the time of the recording in 2023, she was living in France. It is still important to her that her story is taken up and processed by the next generation of her family.
