Lieselotte Kroppová

"It was prescribed to take food for two or three days. No gold, nothing expensive. Something to cover you and the bare necessities to wear. That was prescribed what one was allowed to take. We couldn't choose. It was prescribed. If anyone had anything extra, it was taken from them in the camp. Someone had some souvenirs with them. That was taken from them in the camp. That's what relatives from Germany told us afterwards."

"There was a camp in the main school for the deported people. It was called the Central School. That's where they left for the trains. There was another search of their suitcases, even though they were only allowed to take thirty kilos, there they confiscated other things. And we also had a ticket to go into the camp. Suddenly, two people from the committee came there. They said, 'No, we won't let you go, we need you,' they told my father. 'But we have to go to the labour camp.' 'No, we need you.' They cancelled our boarding pass, left us in the apartment. Because the universities were closed for six years, they didn't have any academics, they didn't have any doctors. That's why they didn't let my father, who had studied in Prague and could speak decent Czech, leave. Neither did our whole family."

"We used to visit each other, and I was with the Hoffmanns at the time. We used to do some homework there [with my friend, the Hoffmanns' daughter], or we played together. And all of a sudden it started. That was next door, the synagogue was next door. There was all this screaming, breaking glass. We were looking right at it from the Hoffmanns. And then he called my daddy and told him that it was terrible and that now he wouldn't let me go anywhere, and then almost at night, Mr Hoffmann took me home. He called Daddy and told him that I was there and that something terrible was happening, that they were destroying the synagogue. I was nine years old back then. Eight, actually. I saw it directly. Then the fire started, they were throwing out some furniture. Windows were cracking and so on. I saw it directly, as an eight-year-old child."

“My husband, he was still a young boy. He knew his uncle Jenda was in Prague. But he had no documents, just a confirmation of his release from a German military hospital. He needed to cross the border because he was looking for his mother and father, but he only had a German military identification. He decided to go to Prague and find his uncle. However, all trains were searched. He wondered what to do if he was checked, because had he shown the German papers, he would be arrested. When they came to check his papers for the first time he pretended to be asleep. When they came for the second time, he asked them ‘What do you want?’ ‘So are you Czech or German?’ Because he could speak perfectly Czech he said ‘Of course I’m Czech’. Thus they let him go to Prague without checking his documents. When my uncle saw him, he nearly had a stroke. He was a bank clerk. Hubert painted his German uniform and went to the bank. Suddenly he appeared in the bank. My uncle asked him: ‘Please, what are you doing here?’ and quickly took him home. He gave him his coat and left him at his place for about two days. It was dangerous. My uncle knew that my mother was in Kraslice. Hubert went back. It was in the autumn, in November. My uncle helped him, but he was scared, because for a German to appear in the autumn of 1945 in Prague, that was really risky. He clothed him, gave him to eat and bought him a return ticket. Hubert made it to Sokolov because he knew perfectly Czech and nobody could tell that he was actually a German. The train station in Sokolov was guarded by gendarmes and he had nothing in his hands. But he was eager to see our mom after all these years. When the train stopped at the station, he didn’t go with the other people. It was in the evening, it was getting dark. He got out in the back of the train, waited until all the other people had left and chose a way where he could evade control. He knew that my mother lived at the place of her father's friend, which was in the direction of Bublava. When it was safe to move – the gendarmes left the station and people slowly disappeared in different directions, he slowly got on the way so that no one saw him. Suddenly, he saw a woman who looked like his mother. While he followed her, he recognized her by the way she walked. Then he said: ‘Good evening, Mrs. Kropp’. It was my mom. He hadn’t seen her in three years.”

“Our parents didn’t teach us Czech. Czech was compulsory at German schools from the third grade up. My brother was three years older than me and thus he had an advantage over me. They only had a couple of Czech classes a week, I don’t recall exactly how many, but it wasn’t an awful lot. My parents spoke both languages fluently but they wouldn’t teach us Czech. When they needed to speak about something they didn’t want us to know they would speak Czech. Thus in 1945, I didn’t speak Czech. All I knew in Czech was hello, thank you and goodbye. My brother spoke a bit more but not too much either.”

“I don’t like to recall my first ball too much. I used to go out to socialize in the company of my brother, because all of our former friends and class mates were gone, they had been expelled. So me and my brother would go to out together. It was my first ball in my life. I was about seventeen or maybe eighteen years old. We were dancing and suddenly somebody said that the Germans had nothing to do there. This was a real pain for me. Because when you’re so young and somebody tells you to get out, it really hurts. So we went through all sorts of things like that. Then we befriended some Germans who stayed in Czechoslovakia as well. Their parents were mine workers so they had to stay here. We would spend time together with them. We would organize home parties and balls together with them.”

“They all had to go and so we thought that we’d go as well. It wasn’t about whether you wanted to go or not. They would issue an order saying that all Germans have to go and that’s why we assumed that we’d go as well. But they held us here. I don’t know if it had been better or not. Maybe I would have been able to complete my studies there. I have always wanted to become a child doctor. That has always been my dream but it wasn’t possible here under the communists. I’ve never seen any of my former class mates again. Our class has never met again. At the time of the deportation, we were about fifteen years old. They all scattered to all corners of Europe, never to see each other again. The classmates of my brother, who were only deported later on, reunited afterwards. Through my brother, I made contact with some of his former class mates that I had known. With three of them I was in touch via the telephone for a long time. Many years ago, we once met. The communist regime wouldn’t let us go to Germany and thus my dad had never seen his siblings again. It’s sad but it’s true. His aunt had a beautiful villa in Mariánské Lázně. He had four brothers living there. Her husband was a doctor in the spa there and until he died in 1939 he was also the mayor of the town. My aunt was then in charge of the hotel and had thirty-five furnished rooms there. When she was deported, she was allowed to take one luggage with a weight of 30 kilos with her. It was my father’s oldest sister and the younger one left with her as well. One of his brothers was a clerk at the spa administration in Mariánské lázně and the other one had a sweets shop. My parents would never see them again in their life. Before that, we would see them almost every weekend. We even had our own room in her hotel that was only for us. After they were driven out of Czechoslovakia, they never reunited again. It’s very, very sad.”

“We didn’t have any citizenship. In fact, we were Germans. Under Hitler, we automatically got German state citizenship. After the war, we didn’t have anything. We were left stranded without any citizenship. Thus we weren’t allowed to go to school. In 1947, the smaller kids were finally allowed to go at least to elementary school. Even some of our acquaintances could go, from the Heimatchor. But they wouldn’t let me go to grammar school because I didn’t have citizenship and furthermore, I didn’t speak Czech. So these were indeed troubled times. Prisoners from POW camps were passing through Sokolov. There was a lazaretto in the cloister building that was run by the Americans. A camp was established in the former school building in Chebská ulice Street in 1945. It had originally been a Czech school that was turned into a German grammar school under Hitler. That camp served to detain all the transports that then continued to Russia. People of all kinds of nationalities were detained there, Russians, Italians, French. All those who were returning home. As I had taken part in courses organized by the Red Cross, my mother’s acquaintances employed me there. Back in those days, it would be the norm to let German girls clean up the mess after the Americans. In order to spare me from that, I was in the lazaretto as a nurse of the Red Cross. This continued all the way till autumn 1945.”