They kicked us out of our home even though we were not guilty of anything
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Erika Perniková, née Faschingbauer, was born on 16 December 1939 in the village of Přední Zvonková on the border with Austria into the German family of Marie and Antonín Faschingbauer. She had a brother Antonín, 11 years older. She grew up when the village of Zvonková was under German occupation, but her parents were not Nazi sympathizers and tried to live a normal life. Her childhood was fundamentally disrupted by a series of events after the end of World War II, when the family was expelled from their home and interned in Český Krumlov. The witness could not even enter the first grade. Eventually the family did not have to be deported and remained in Czech. They lived and worked on farms in Kvítkův Dvůr and Korák, from where Erika Perniková went to school in Žimutice. In her childhood she experienced bullying because of her German nationality and her lack of knowledge of Czech. After graduating from the burgher school she worked as a farm labourer. In the mid-1950s they moved to Český Krumlov. Erika Perniková worked there as a cleaner in the hospital and after completing her course she got a job as a nurse in surgery. She discovered her life’s mission and worked in the health care sector for 50 years. She was married to Jan Pernik, a forester, since 1961 and they raised three sons together. After her husband’s death, she worked until she was 67. In 2024, she lived in Český Krumlov.
