Adalbert Schiller

"I had a very close relationship with my mother and she with me. She didn't tell anyone much, but she did talk to me. She cursed and said what was on her mind, because she knew I knew what she meant. When we went [to Czechoslovakia] for the first time, we still had to have a visa, I also arranged it for my mother. I watched her as we arrived where we used to live. Our house was no longer standing, everything was gone. Mother was as white as a wall, but she showed nothing. She didn't swear or cry, there was silence, she just told me to do this or that. Only later, when we went back, could we talk about it. Then she said what it was like when she went to school that there was a businessman there who gave them candy, and every time someone came to him, he made fun in the dialect: 'Do they have cheese? They want fish. Do they have fish? They want cheese. Do they have anything? They want sausage. Do they have sausage? They don't want anything. ' She always mentioned that when we drove around the house where he lived. My mother and siblings and I were first in Czechoslovakia in 1972. I wanted to take my grandmother as well, but the excitement took her so much that she was unable to go. I wanted to pick her up in the morning, but she couldn't. She died soon after. My father was never there, he died in 1966. My mother would then go to Czechoslovakia with me regularly. The last time was at Christmas 1992. She was already very weak, but I asked her if she wanted to come with me. She wanted to, definitely. The siblings were against it, but in the end it was just the two of us. She absolutely wanted to see her birth house in Skapec. We got out, there was a Czech woman we knew well, and my mother wanted to go inside at all costs to look at the apartment and the stable, now there was a collective farm. So the women showed us. Mother was very emotional. I watched her, you could see her feeling it, but she wouldn't let it out. "

"At the end of the war, the Americans were here first. When they arrived, there were tanks all along the main street. The soldiers picked up food from the peasants and drove on again. A tank also stopped near our house. Suddenly there was a gunshot, a soldier fell to the ground dead. You can imagine what it caused. They circled the village and began investigating who was shooting. Only after a few hours of searching, because some neighbors saw it with their own eyes, did they close the investigation, saying it was an unfortunate accident. The poor soldier wanted to jump out of the tank, but he stumbled upon his weapon, which fired and killed him. At home, it was often said that if it happened to the Russians, they would kill the whole village. Grandma had to put a sheet in which to wrap the dead soldier. He lay in front of our house for three days. Then they picked him up and took him away. "

"As I mentioned, expulsion was a great trauma for most exiles. My father never came to terms with it. I read that such trauma is transmitted for up to three generations before it finally ends. Old people, my grandparents, talked about it every day. But I must also say that they never cursed the Czechs or anyone. They didn't really talk about it much in front of us children, but I was very curious then and I listened to their conversations from behind the door and behind the closet. Of course, it affected me. In the 1970s, after my father's death, my mother asked me if I would like to enter the Landsmannschaft and help there. I have been a member of the Landsmannschaft since 1972, I am involved and I have probably done everything there. Obmann [leader], his deputy, I am now a district attorney in Hof. We organize many events and my homeland means a lot to me, I inherited that from my parents. Every year I go to the old homeland several times, not only to our village, but also to other cities. I'm interested in history, I've read a lot about it. "

"In 1956, I started teaching car mechanics. Even then, I wondered what would happen to us next. I had a three-and-a-half-year apprenticeship contract. My father still believed we would go home, he often talked about it. And so I, a fourteen-year-old, was puzzled about how I would do it when he wanted to go back, and I have to study here. But that's what children think. "