Ida Menzingerová

* 1931

  • "... We're going to the expulsion, my father came to Nové Domky, he had the paper that Brzák had to release me, that we were going to the expulsion, we were looking forward to going away to the expulsion too, so I went home and in two days we had to move out. They came, I don't know who, we called 'the commissar', it was the nobs, these young boys on horses, and they were watching what we could take with us. So it was thirty kilos per person outside of shoes, they didn't count, and dishes too, that was more, but personal things thirty kilos. My dad could take his sewing machine because he was sewing shoes, that was an expensive machine, he wanted to take that with him, and my mother could take her machine, we could take that too, and otherwise we didn't have much, we only had one pair of shoes, and otherwise we had clogs - we were happy, we could walk around in those clogs, like the Dutch clogs we had, and our grandfather made them - and so we had to be in Nové Domky by the shop, that there, and it was strange to us that we didn't go down to Lipno, to the station, why didn't we go there, when all the transports met there, and then from there they were all moved out in big cars, they were military cars, huge, they loaded the transports. Well, we didn't do anything! We waited all day, a hot day, it was in June, and then we waited all the time, no phone, nothing, and we took our boxes, we took the stuff, and we folded it there and waited, and Grandpa had to put the cows back in the big yard, where the police headwaters was, we called it the commissariat, I guess it was, I don't know. And then we waited, and in the evening the forman would come with the horses and say, 'Are you the Sulzer family?' - 'Yeah.' - 'Well I'm Bible and I'm coming to get you...'"

  • "The Germans thought, or the Germans... everybody... everybody thought, as these people were put here during the war, that it was for two months, that then they would go again... that we would go back. It was nothing. Nobody went back. So they dug in, they made bunkers, they buried things, they hid lard and food, that they would come back in two months - nobody came back. It all stayed under that ground or the people who moved in found it, so they found the bunkers and stuff..."

  • "Then came Advent, when we had to pray every day and prepare for Christmas. And then Christmas came. And we were looking forward to that, because Grandpa made clogs, and we tied the shavings together and we had it on the tree, we had like a chain made, we didn't have gold chains, and we made paper, and candy, sugar cubes we wrapped in paper, like a staniol, or whatever we called it, to have something, and we had apples and baked biscuits on the tree. And it was beautiful. And the presents, we didn't get presents, just what was made at home. My dad made horses for the boys or some sheep or something like that... we got clogs, we enjoyed that too, those were the canzans, the whole wooden ones, and that was very nice. And how we could sled and fly with that..."

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    České Budějovice, 03.11.2023

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We all thought it was only for two months

Ida Menzinger, 1951
Ida Menzinger, 1951
photo: Archive of the witness

Ida Menzinger, born Sulzerová, was born on 4 May 1931 in Kobylnice in the Šumava border region into a German-speaking family. She had twelve siblings, her father Kajetán was a shoemaker, her mother Terezie was a housewife. After World War II, part of the family was deported, but Ida Menzinger stayed with her parents and younger siblings because they had to wait for her brother Otto to return from prison. After his return, however, there were no more deportations, and so the Sulzer family was relocated only inland to the village of Přísahov. After the war, the witness could no longer continue her education. She served with the Czechs, where she was not treated well as a German. It was only here that she gradually began to learn Czech, secretly thanks to the daughter of her employer. Later, she found work briefly in agriculture and at the Water Works during the construction of Lipno. Finally, she found her fulfilment in a job at a hotel in Vyšší Brod, where she stayed until her retirement. She raised five children, one of her daughters married in West Germany. She was repeatedly interrogated by State Security, pressured to cooperate and constantly monitored for correspondence with her family abroad. Her husband, Jan, was a professional soldier and lost his job because of her background. Ida Menzinger was living in Vyšší Brod in 2023.