I have got to learn about many nationalities. There are people everywhere, such and such
Download image
Anna Michalski was born on March 27, 1924 in Niesnersberg, today called Nýznerov, nearby Žulová (Friedberg), region Jeseník (Freiwaldau in Schlesien). She had eight siblings. The family was very poor, the situation after the WW1 brought much hunger along. During the times of Hitler there was an improvement, so called children´s allowance among other things. The family as well as the many other people in the almost purely German territory of the Czechoslovakia, which was established in 1918, was glad that they could belong to Germany as Germans. Anna and also most of the other children reported to the Hitler Youth without being its active members. In 1945 the Russians came and took Anni with other Germans to Glatz (today Klodsko in Poland). There she signed an false accusation by the Germans and was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in Siberia at the age of 21. A few months after the verdict she was already with three other German women in Norilsk. After an intervention by Konrad Adenauer in 1955 she returned, although not to Silesia, but to the western part of Germany. There she later met her husband, who also came from Silesia, and founded a family in Osnabrück. She only met her parents, who were not allowed to participate in the resettlement, much later, because she became an “unwanted” person due to her stay in the labour camp. She remained in Osnabrück, where she now lives in a retirement home.
