"When we were waiting for the Americans, they put up four columns in the square in front of the barracks and two boys, they were scouts, they were about five years older than me, so they were in the group that took care of it. And they brought our German mother to iron the flags, the English flag, the American flag, our flag, and now I don't remember which was the fourth one."
"They treated them very badly. You know what the Jews experienced here under the Germans. I know that in Domažlice, those Jews had to walk with a yellow star, and I remember that I didn't know those people at all. Me and the girls always greeted them all. We wanted to let them know that we didn't mind the star, but we didn't dare to communicate with them, we didn't dare to do that anymore, it wasn't asked for, yeah. They were really kind of excommunicated."
"It was known that Hitler was going to occupy the Sudetenland and my father was ordered to lead the family to safety. Late in the evening, I remember it like today, at ten o'clock, I was sitting on a suitcase at the main station in Karlovy Vary, and we were going to my aunts who lived in the Zákolany where he was born."
Erika Pelnářová was born on 29 March 1930 in Karlovy Vary into a mixed Czech-German family. Her father worked at the railway. In the days of the Munich crisis, the family had to leave Karlovy Vary, first taking refuge with her father’s relatives in Zákolany and then moving to Domažlice. There, Erika attended a Czech girls’ school. She experienced the liberation of Domažlice by the American army. After graduating high school, she began studying German and Nordic studies in Prague. She did not finish school because she got married and went to Slovakia with her architect husband. After five years, they moved to Mariánské Lázně, where Erika Pelnářová taught German at a language school. In addition, she spoke several other languages. From childhood, she was involved in sports, skiing, and playing tennis and was also an excellent figure skater. Erika Pelnářová died on 28 June 2020.
