Kurt Hein

“And these people then drove us out of our homes. When they were driving us out, I took only my school bag, that’s all I had. They were wearing Russian uniforms with Russian submachine guns. They moved neighbourhood by neighbourhood, so we heard about them in advance. And everyone had their bag packed and just grabbed it and joined the gathering people, and from there we were herded into the camp. I don’t want to be vindictive now or say who knows what. We were in town, standing in front of the Troppau Hotel, Slezský Domov it’s called now. There were a good five hundred of us gathered there. Then their commander shouted: ‘Stop, stand still!’ And first we had to shout out loud: ‘Hitler is swine!’ and when we didn’t shout loud enough, he had a submachine gun in his hands and waved it around and every time he raised it, he fired a few shots into the air. Well, we had to obey him. Then we had to go on foot from that hotel Slezský Domov all the way down to the Opava camp (the camp in Opava street), that would be about two kilometres. And they wanted us to all sing along the way: ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!’ And we had to sing that over and over until we reached the camp.”

“Straight away we had to report to the National Committee and were assigned work. Because Krnov was a frontline town, all the streets were closed with anti-tank barricades and us boys had to clear these roadblocks away. First we were removing a roadblock near the station and when we were done, they sent us to Hřbitovní (cemetery) street. There was already a sign up: Warning, mines! So we stopped and first of all a firefighter from the German Army came along. He defused what he found and said: ‘Right, now you can work in peace’. So we cleared one side of the street where there was a pile of beams and then it was just the last beam laying there, well the boys were hauling it away and there was one last mine. They had probably buried it, I don’t know where it was, but either way that mine exploded. On of my classmates who was standing about a metre and a half to my right, like social distancing now during corona, he was dead on the spot. My best friend, a year and a half younger than me, it blew both his eyes out, he went blind. Federmann also lost an eye and everyone there had some kind of shrapnel in their stomach, legs… And I, I don’t understand it to this day and I’ve told this story many times, I was one of the people standing closest to the explosion, but nothing happened to me. All except one shard about the size of a pin head, that’s still imbedded in my right knee.”

"Ich hatte aber, das muss ich jetzt einschränken, das Glück, dass ich da zumal mit sechzehn Jahren schon eine Sanitätsausbildung hatte. Und dann hat man mir für dieses ganze Lager, das war ungefähr hundert sechzig Buben, die Sanitätsstube anvertraut. Und ich musste für die um Gesundheitliches sorgen. Und nicht allein das. Wie waren da auf einer Burg gelegen und unten im Ort, zu der Zeit sind von den Russen ja viele geflüchtet, von Osten her, und da lag der ganze Saal des Gasthauses voll von solchen geflüchteten Menschen. Und der nächste Arzt war elf Kilometer entfernt ohne Autobusverbindung. Und dann hat man mich, sechzehnjährigen, dazu noch verpflichtet, mich um diese Leute zu kümmern. Und ich sage immer scherzhaft, die haben alle zu mir mit sechzehn Jahren Herr Doktor gesagt und ich habe es mir gefallen lassen. () Also ich habe immer versucht in meinem Leben, wenn ich so zurückdenke, Menschen in irgendeine Weise immer wieder zu helfen und das ist so meine Einstellung. Aber ich möchte immer wieder zurückkommen auf meine Pflegeeltern. Das ist eine Erziehung, die mir diese beiden Pflegeeltern beigebracht und vorgesetzt haben. Den Menschen und den anderen nicht zu verachten oder zu verungünsten, jedenfalls dass man Menschen helfen muss."