We had no idea where we were going in Bohemia
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Berta Jelínková, née Jakubovská, was born on April 13, 1933 in the village of Greoni in Banat, Romania. She grew up in nearby Božovice, where she first attended a German school and later a Romanian gymnasium during the Second World War. In Božovice, fierce fights took place between the Germans and the Soviets. Although both her parents came from Czech families, they spoke Romanian at home. In 1946, the witness’s father died, so for the mother of four children, a challenging period arose in connection with the post-war misery and poverty, which the family decided to solve by moving to Bohemia. In the autumn of 1947, the witness’s family and her other relatives travelled to Cheb as part of the transport of re-emigrants. They then spent a few days in a gathering camp for re-emigrants, from where they transferred them to Hazlov, where the family lived for almost a year and a half. When the witness was only fourteen years old, she started working in a spinning mill. After moving to Cheb, she ran into minor problems communicating in Czech, as she only rarely spoke Czech until then. She married in 1952 and worked in a worsted yarn spinning mill until her retirement in 1988. At the time of filming, the witness lived in Cheb (June 2022).
