Christiane Müller

“What did we take with us? The first people to leave the country, they had to be at the station in twelve hours with 45 kilograms. But in our case we were allowed to take stuff with us. We had to write everything down – ten handkerchiefs, five pairs of socks, three dresses, one hat – write it all down. And then they calculated the price and we had to pay. When we got to the border they unpacked everything and checked it. If one of the border guards liked something, they took it. My mother paid 8000 koruna for everything and some things went missing, but she was allowed to take a lot, that I can say. I had a heavy pack, Mum always said. ‘What have you got there, my child?’ I had my favourite glass vase, it was heavy and I’d wrapped it up in my bag. That’s what they call sentimentality, I think.”

“For me as a kid it was a sudden loss. My friends of pre-school age or maybe even the first class – suddenly they were gone. And we had seven cats! Everyone would tell my Mum: ‘You’ll look after our cat, won’t you?’ A cat belongs to a house, stays with the house. We had seven cats, because everyone was gone. We fed them. Some came to us, others we fed at their houses. It went quickly and then they stopped it (the Expulsion). We were also allowed to stay. Maybe because we weren’t Nazis. Maybe they had some lists where this was written down? We were allowed to stay, maybe also because of the business. They figured out that if everyone gets sent to Germany, the business will grind to a halt.”

“One of the Russians once took me on his lap, stroked my head and cried saying he had a wife a child at home as well. And I had a dolly! She was full of straw, that’s how they did it at the time. And that’s where Mum hid all the jewellery, watches, ear-rings, everything that was important or valuable. And she told me: ‘You mustn’t let go of that doll, if you let it get out of your hands we won’t have anything to eat at home.’ I didn’t understand what that meant. And that Russian took my doll so I immediately grabbed it back. And then Mum said: ‘You mustn’t do it like that either!’ So it was difficult, for us kids.”