Erna Munzarová

“Mom believed that dad would come back, and then she and dad worked here and did not know if we will be here or we will not be here. Dad liked this corner and was at home here, he did not like the Germans very much. He stayed what he was. I would never say my father was not German either. I lived my childhood in that time and the rest of my life here. But I am still the same." – "Dad never regretted not being expelled?" – "No, he was at home here. Although he did not get much out of it, because they cut down his salaries at the beginning, took some percentages off. And he said that he was simply a second-class citizen. But he had the radio and he went through it this way."

“In the 1938, when I was still at my grandmother's, one of the first expenses, when my dad was already working, a radio was bought on credit, on installments, a man brought it from Poříčí in a backpack on his back. And for grandpa, the radio was his world, he listened everything. We had our first radio like this. And in 1945 all the Germans had to hand in their radios, so we lost this radio. Then dad cleaned the pieces from the weaving mill, just if there are any threads or any holes somewhere, it has to be adjusted, we did that as a chore because we lived right next to the weaving mill. So, dad was always cleaning and it saved money for another radio because he could not be without a radio."

“My grandpa and grandma had to leave Chvaleč on 18 July, it was my grandmother's birthday, a soldier came and told them they had to leave the house. So, they had to go. My aunt's youngest daughter was about three years old and they had a baby carriage and some suitcase. Grandpa had a hand drawn hay cart, and they had a luggage on it, and grandma was sitting on it because she could not walk very well, and grandfather was pulling her. My aunt had the baby carriage and the kids had something, and my cousin told me that the Czech soldier carried the suitcase for them. She thought he should not have done it, that it might have got him in trouble. They put them in an inn in Chvaleč. The next day the mayor came and said that they were naturally not going to keep the old people there, and he let them go home. So, grandpa and grandma went back home again and lived there for about a year. And my aunt and her children were in Horní Staré Město, where the camp was, and she was employed there because she had to earn money."

“He had a short training, then he was with the radio operators and delivered ciphers keys. He rode with another one and they got as far as Finland, he was in Helsinki, and then he got a fragment in his eye. They operated on him in Berlin and that was in 1944. I do not even know if he found his unit, where he belonged, then in the confusion. He got captured by the Russians and got into a camp in Potsdam where there were thousands of prisoners. And there he was until the end of the war. He said that the Russians did not do anything to them, but they did not give them food, but he said that they themselves had nothing to eat, so they could not. From there the doctor sent him home, in August 1945. He was there looking for us when he found out there was an expulsion, he was looking for his parents and us, going from one camp to another shouting the name of our district. That is how he found out we were here, so he came." – "Did he come alone, or did your mother have to go to the border to get him?" – "No, he came alone by train, he had a free ticket to his residence. He got his first few slaps in Stara Paka, there he got some old clothes that did not fit him at all, he was forty-five kilos when he got home."

“When I went to the cinema for the first time, it was in Trutnov, my dad went to borrow five korunas to one man, we had a bill there – as a debt – it was always paid later, and we went on foot to Trutnov, he bought me a ticket there, I was in the cinema and he waited outside until I will come out and we returned home. So that was my first cinema on credit.”