We didn’t want Hitler, we did well without him.
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Ingeborg Kutinová (née Heidenreich) was born in Petrovice near Ústí nad Labem on 18 May 1930 as the only child in a mixed German-Slovak family. Her mother Anna Heidenreich never married but shared the household with Dezider Kočiš with whom she had one daughter. Ingeborg Heidenreich experienced the arrival of the German army in the borderland, which became part of the Third Reich because of the Munich Agreement, in Pirna where she lived temporarily with her mother. Her father often worked abroad and supported his partner and daughter. Ingeborg grew up in the family’s house in Petrovice where her grandmother also lived. She remembers the bombing of Dresden during the war. In 1945, Petrovice was liberated by the Soviet army and the witness and all the women of the village hid from the incoming soldiers, fearing rape or other physical attacks. Since the witness came from a mixed marriage, the family was not deported as other Germans and was allowed to stay in their house in Petrovice. After the war, Ingeborg Heidenreich joined the local factory Jan Dittmayer and Co. (formerly Hans Dittmayer and Co.) producing buttons, zippers and other textile accessories. She worked there until retirement. At the time of filming, in 2024, she was living in her house in Petrovice.
