“I was a blonde, and the German soldiers were taking pictures with me on a motorcycle, and they were calling me unsere kleine Böhmin – our little Czech. They didn’t hurt me. There was a bakery shop in Albeř, run by a German. I was going there everyday with a basket for fresh bread. We had a pub, and German soldiers were sleeping there in the hall, and we were bringing this food for them. I was a little girl and I was bringing them food; my foster parents were taking care of them, they had to.”
“Běleč is surrounded by forests, and partisans were living there. I was bringing food for them there, I was pretending that I was going to pick mushrooms, nobody knew about it, just me. I would always bring them food and leave it there secretly, placing the dishes there and taking back the empty ones. I was supporting them this way. There was a chase for them after the war. Tonda, who was a ruthless villain, wanted to win a higher post. I don’t know how exactly it was, if they shot somebody or not, it’s possible that someone had been watching me.”
“Afterwards, there were mostly only Czechs living in the border regions, and they treated the Germans cruelly. We, the Czech nation, know to be evil. They were shooting them like rabbits. They shot him, and he hasn’t even done or said anything to them, they shot him and buried him in the forest. There was so much hatred after the war.” Interviewer: “Were you ashamed of them?” – “I was ashamed of the Czechs, sure I was! When I was growing up there as a child, the Czechs and Germans were living next to each other, they were working in one factory, which connected Albeř to Nová Bystřice, and then it ended so badly. Our people were shooting people like rabbits. I didn’t witness these postwar excesses.” Interviewer: “And how did you learn about them?” – “Because I saw a man who was buried in the forest, his arm was protruding from the ground, he was from he neighbouring village, from Hůrka.”
Jarmila Jägerová was born March 21, 1923 in Červený Újezd near Kladno. As a little girl she became an orphan and social workers placed her into a foster family who lived in the Sudetenland - in Albeř near Nová Bystřice close to the border with Austria. She was attending a Czech one-room school there. After the Munich conference she decided to leave the border region and return to the interior, to her sister to Běleč. After the war she helped her foster family in Albeř with preparing for their escape from the country and saving of their property.
