Monika Kreuzová

"I experienced the expulsion because many people we were friends with left. When they were in displacement, they offered us to move into their flats, which my parents didn't agree to at all because they felt that they were pushing them out. My mother and father had that experience with me. I was standing in the window when they were gathering to move out. I had a doll and I was shouting that the Russians wanted to steal my child. That was from what I so observed, what they were talking about. But as I say, my parents kept us out of it."

"There was a lot of talk about it at home because they blew up the sugar factory [the ammunition depot there] and there was a lot of fear among the old people about what would happen. When my mother told me about it later - how it was on the thirty-first [July 31, 1945] when they threw people into the water, it shocked me. They threw my mother and her pram and her baby. I was older by the time she told me, I was in the medical field, and I couldn't imagine that anyone could hurt someone like that. I know, it was the war, I didn't experience those horrors, my parents kept it from us, they didn't want it talked about. Then when the deportation happened, my mother had to make a decision. Dad said that we would stay here, and if she wanted to leave, she would leave without the children. Mum stayed because she didn't want to give up the children. She never learned Czech, she knew 2 or 3 words and that was it. At that time, however, there were still a lot of old people in Krásné Březno who stayed or were Czech, they were nice to us and my mother spoke German everywhere."