“They were real cattle cars with these kind of shutters up the top. You could look out, but there was this woman with a small child, just a few weeks old and she didn’t let us open them. So we had to sit in the closed car until we got out. That wasn’t nice at all. We’d liked to have looked out, but sadly couldn’t. She would shout out immediately: ‘Close the shutters! Close them! There’s a draught.’ Well, we had to close them up. It was the Commissar’s child. She had looked after his household and went to bed with him. But as soon as she had the child, she was suddenly gone, she was sent on the first transport and was in the wagon with us. That’s how it was back then. She was the housekeeper, she cooked and catered to his needs, and the bed was of course part of it. And so there was suddenly a child involved and he had no use for her. So she just had to leave by the next transport and that happened to be ours.”
“There were hundreds of people there, the food was terrible, only turnip soup in the morning, noon and evening, a whole fortnight there was nothing but turnip soup. And there were also a lot of bedbugs there. Oh my God, at night you could see them marching up and down the bunk beds. Soon we had bites all over us. That was terrible, but it was only a fortnight so we managed to last. Svitavy, that’s about thirty kilometres from us, from Moravská Třebová. Those were military buildings, where they put us up. We were locked inside until they could send us further, until they sent us by train to Germany.”
“Everything happened normally, but then from the Czech side someone came along to take a look at the house, right? ‘I like it, I’ll take that one!’ And that’s how it was with us. We had a farm and then one day a man came along with the Commissar: ‘So he’ll take this house.’ And that meant we had to move, and that’s how it went, in quite a short time, in two or three days we had to pack up and stand in front of the house with fifty kilograms. And then we carried on to Svitavy and in Svitavy we were put into the big camp and that Suchomel, or whatever he was called, brought his whole family along and lived in our house. Until today, of course then his son and now his grandson, right… Because we’ve already been there, twice already and the name Suchomel is on our house. There was the Commissar and three or four people who were responsible for the whole resort, the whole village… anyone who was interested in a house had to go to him. And that’s how all the houses were gradually taken, one by one. And that Suchomel came to him one day and went with the Commissar to take a look at the house and said: right, I’ll take this house. And then immediately they said we had to go and we had only three or four days before expulsion.
(We took only) the most important things with us, we had a bed and then the most important things like clothing and cups and plates, we took those as well.”
“They drove all the cows from the whole village together and wanted to send them to Russia. They put them behind the fire brigade’s fence and the next day they were to leave for Russia. Then they went to get my father: ‘he has to come with us, harness the horses!’ The Russians threw their backpacks and things on a cart and he had to go with them. We, my mother, sister and me, of course we cried our eyes out. But the Russians said: ‘Back, he has to come with us, he’ll find a new mamushka in Russia’ or something like that, they said. And then with them, the cows and the transport, our father walked about sixty or seventy kilometres. In the end they slept somewhere and the Russians drank a lot, which my father made use of and asked some woman to bring him sacks. He tied these to the horses legs to muffle the hooves and around half past one at night he started out. If they caught him, they’d already said right away he’d be shot. But he risked it anyway. He could’ve escaped easier on his own, but he wanted to take his horses with him. He started out for home, slept in the woods and at home he hid for three days in the woods as well. And then we had our daddy back! We were so happy, because we thought we’d never see him again. That was double the joy!”
“We had one meadow ‘on the Czech side’. Then during haymaking we’d cross over the border and bring back the hay in our cart. And of course down there we bought up whatever things we couldn’t get ourselves. For me it was pencils, school notebooks and similar things and we’d hide them in the hay. And that’s how we smuggled things over the border. But once there was a police man and my father had to stop and he checked to see if we were hiding anything. But it was just small things, notebooks and such. So my dad only got a fine. But if there had been more, it would probably have ended differently. But that was back then, when there were things on the other side that you couldn’t get in Germany, meaning in our Sudety, which at that time was German.”
Franz Konrad was born on 3 September 1934 in the town of Dlouhá Loučka near Moravská Třebová, in a German-language enclave. His parents owned a larger farm, where Franz and his sister helped out. After the annexation of Sudety, in 1938 the town became part of the German Reich. The borders with the Protectorate were close by and part of the Konrád family estate was on the Czech side. At the time they occasionally smuggled small goods that were in short supply into Sudety. Of the war, Mr Konrad mostly remembers their house being taken over during the Soviet liberation, and his father being taken to Russia. His father, who didn’t enlist due to his advanced age, managed to escape the Soviets and return to his family. In September 1945 Franz didn’t start attending school, because he couldn’t speak Czech. In May of 1946 their farm was occupied and the whole family was expelled. They shared a transport with the housekeeper of the local Czech Commissar and partisan, who sent her to Germany immediately on giving birth. After stopping at the dismal camp in Svitavy, they continued to Forchheim, where the family settled. The parents were given material compensation from the state in the form of a plot of land. Franz learned the trade of weaver, but spent most his time working in a factory for aeroplane ball bearings. His whole life he has taken part in the activities of various associations and proudly told his grandchildren of his roots, without any bitterness. He died on October 3, 2024.
