M. A. R.: “We were in the camp and they picked out us youngsters and loaded us up. I asked, where we were going but they didn’t tell me. Well, they loaded us on a truck, drove us around. We wanted to tell our parents that, we are here and there but they wouldn’t let us go. We ended up at some village, it was called ´”Neudorf”, “Nová Ves” (New Village).”
Interviewer: “Nová Ves, yeah.”
M. A. R.: “There they put us on a huge farm. There were also some commissioners – they could do whatever they liked. I remember that once, when we were sleeping, there was a loud slam. What were they doing? They killed… They were commissioners; they could do whatever they wanted. Well, I wanted to say that my little brother, Tomíček, they took him away, to some brick workshop, poor him, he was carrying it. And what was his name, where did they take him to?”
O. Rácz: “Wait, now imagine, that Tonda was three years younger than me. I was seventeen years old. He was fourteen. In Malkov, there was a thrashing machine for grain and we were carrying that grain in huge sacks. Tonda was fifteen years old and he had to carry those heavy sacks with grain to the second floor all day long. A fifteen-year old lad!”
M. A. R.: “That was when Karban got really angry and I didn’t speak Czech!”
O. Rácz: “Because he didn’t look like fifteen, not at all. He was sturdy, had strong arms. We didn’t have any documents on us. Nobody had any. He seemed to be more like seventeen or eighteen years old. But he could carry that sack.”
Interviewer: “You were talking about that brick workshop, you said that they put Toníček in the brick workshop and he didn’t know where he was…”
M. A. R.: “Listen, Neudorf, Nová Ves, and my dad was close to Skalná, he worked for some farmer there. And my mom stayed with my youngest sister in the camp. But what food did they get? Soup for lunch and a couple of potatoes, no coffee. So she went to my dad with Rosemary, she was little. He was a commissioner and had a farmstead.”
O. Rácz: “It was left there after the Germans had gone.”
M. A. R.: “Yeah, and the little baby got fed there properly. And they left all of their belongings in the camp. All the bags they had there. That’s how it was.”
O. Rácz: “That’s a history…”
M. A. R.: “And once I went to Starý Rybník to see my neighbor and she said: ‘Aahh, you’re alive? Mom is crying because she doesn’t know where you are’ and that sort of things. And they didn’t let us inside our house. The commissioners. ‘When they come to your place tell them that I’m at this and that peasant’s place.”
O. Rácz.: “Look, it’s true that by the time we arrived in Málkov, it was already calm there and although, we were convicts, the people there treated us kindly. Nobody threatened us and we weren’t humiliated at all.”
M. A. R.: “We lived on the ground the first week, when we arrived.”
O. R.: “Yes, we had straw beds readied here for us.”
M. A. R.: “Yes, straw beds.”
O. R.: “Nine. On Friday evening at ten o’clock.”
Interviewer: “And you met in that year 1947, at the farm in Málkov in March?”
O. R.: “I can see her as if it was today. She had a beautiful face and red lips, a short grey jacket made of military garment, she looked very pretty. She kept running around me and said, ‘I have to stop you’ and she was…we were normal.”
Interviewer: “And then you were together in that Málkov. How long did you actually stay there?”
O. R.: “About a year. Then I was drafted to the army. I did my military service, in 1951. And then I moved her to Skuhrov. Her dad was in Skuhrov at that time.”
Interviewer: “That’s where you came on that horse? On Jiřina?”
O. R.: “That’s where I came to visit her but then I took her back to Málkov.”
Interviewer: “So you went to Skuhrov for a while?”
M. A. R.: “We were in Skuhrov briefly and he was in the army. He wanted to move to Slovakia with me.”
O. R.: “Well, that was a bit later, wait, we have to…”
M. A. R.: “When you were in the army.”
O .R.: “…when her mother died. Her dad was there with her mom, who died and after about a year he found another German woman and they moved to Skuhrov.”
M. A. R.: “They were rather relatives.”
O .R.: “It was on a state farm in Skuhrov. They moved away as well and I stayed there myself, with Karbana and I went to see her to that Skuhrov. Then we agreed that, we’d marry and Karban gave us two rooms and some food. He also did the wedding for us, decorated the rooms and prepared the food. That’s when she was already living there with me.”
Interviewer: “Mrs. Ráczová, could you tell me what it was like when, you had to leave your house? What happened?”
O. Rácz: “How you went to the camp.”
Interviewer: “How did you go to the camp?”
M. A. R.: “Well, they came in the morning. It was about six o’clock or something like that, I don’t even remember anymore. We had to leave at 8 o’clock. We had to go to that…to that place, that’s how they called it. Everyone thirty kilos.”
Interviewer: “Do you know roughly when that was? Was that already in 1945? In June or in May?”
M. A. R.: “We arrived there… When did we get there?”
O. Rácz: “That was in 1947, in March? But what were you doing in 1946? How long were you in the camp?”
M. A. R.: “We were in the camp for three months, in Cheb.”
O. Rácz: “And from there, they transferred you here? Until the time you had been in Cheb? In Rybník? In Starý Rybník (Old Pond)? Until then?”
M. A. R.: “When?”
O. Rácz: “Before they put you in the camp.”
M. A. R.: “When we took the things with us, we ended in the camp, right?”
O. Rácz: “Well, yes, but before that?”
Interviewer: “You were all the time in Starý Rybník, until you went to…”
M. A. R.: “Yes, we were in Starý Rybník.”
Interviewer: “Since the end of the war?”
O. Rácz: “…you were employed there.”
M. A. R.: “Yes, on that sheep farm down there. They had cattle, sheep, cows and everything.”
Interviewer: “So they didn’t put you in one of those transports of the Germans, that were sent to Germany? You weren’t expelled? Why do you think they didn’t do it? They were rallying all the Germans and then banished them… You were a purely German family but stayed in Czechoslovakia.”
M. A. R.: “That’s what they said, those who were running the camp…”
O. Rácz: “I think that what mattered in our case was, that we were valuable for them as a work force, we were four. In their case, it was about property. Their family was completely devoid of any property – they didn’t have any property to speak of. Those who had buildings, farms, and property had to go.”
Marie Anna Ráczová was born on September 3, 1928 in the village of Alten Teich (today “Starý rybník”), in the region of Cheb, to a German family from the Sudetenland by the name of Trüber. Her brothers were killed or were lost during WWII, on the eastern front. After the war, the family was held in a labor camp for three months. In 1947, they were assigned for labor on a farm in Málkov near Beroun. That’s where Marie Anna Trüberová met Ondřej Rácz, who came from a Hungarian family that suffered similar destinies. As soon as circumstances allowed it, they married and had four children. Since 1966, they’ve been living together in Točník.
