Waldemar Richter

"Down from here where the bottom path is, an old locksmith lived. He was an old guy, he was almost eighty, he had such a small workshop. Czechs went there and they found an old gun dating back to times of sharpshooters’ clubs. But the gun did not work any more. They still chased that guy out, they went and brought three or four horse-drawn carriages and got into every house in our street. We had to go into one room and they grabbed whatever they liked. Mom still kept some of dad’s civilian clothes, we had not known about him for about two years, even whether he’d be still alive. She wanted to hide them where the house is, to an alcove where a wheelbarrow was always kept so she put the clothes in a sack and behind that wheelbarrow. They found them anyway so it did not help anything. What was worse, a few days later, we went to Šenov and there was a bloke walking in dad’s clothes.”

„In 1945 when the German army was here, they had a telephone central in our house and ammunition was stored in the yard. When the soldiers left, they abandoned the ammo here. My mom and aunt lived here and they were worried that when the Russkies would come, they would blow everything up and that would be it. So the women picked the crates with grenades and tossed them in the pond. They floated for a while, then the crates opened and turned upside down. They were there for a long time, for several years. Then they fished the pond out and the grenades were still sticking out of the mud.”