Otto Kögler

“The opportunity that we had here - professionally and economically – was incomparable with what life would have been for us in the communist regime over there! I mean you have to clearly say it out loud, right? Talking about the younger generation, so we could cope with the banishment much more easily than, for example, our parents. I mean everything that they had had been taken away from them, their property was expropriated without compensation, right? So they were of course then in an entirely different situation. We had to start from scratch, for sure. So you really had to be ready all the time, be on your guard. That’s what we witnessed in politics again and again, you know. But we still were able to go and progress and the ultimate outcome is what you see here.”

“There was almost no contact with the Czechs. I remember that during the holidays, I even once drove into the interior of Czechoslovakia to learn Czech, the language. In our village, there was only a Czech gendarme, a post-office employee and a bank employee. Besides them, there were no Czechs living there. It was all settled with Volksdeutsche, with Germans in the region of northern Bohemia. Some jobs, later on, were then given to Czechs. For instance the school director, who was at first a German, was later replaced by a Czech director. And my class teacher, Dr. Schrabal, he was Czech, too. But as I said, we had hardly any contact with the Czechs in that region. It was quite the contrary: we kept together. I have to recall our post master Viclas, who was a very kind man. When he saw what had happened to the Germans from Sandau, he moved out, too. He said that he couldn’t watch on to what they did to his German folks.”