Franz Seidl

"I certainly didn't miss material objects so much - we bought those again in Würtemberg. As a child I missed toys and books, which I loved to read. But what I miss much more than material things, what I miss, is the landscape. For example, the tall oak tree that used to stand next to our house and unfortunately had to be cut down. I used to go for walks in the fields with my grandfather. I still miss those haystacks in the autumn. The connection with nature and the landscape, even though it was a rather rough landscape of the Svitava hills. I really like the fresh air, even when the wind blows quite strongly. I feel much better in the climate of Svitavsko than in the surroundings of Gmünd. And I had to leave that climate, even though I would like to continue living there."

"We left and in Svitavy we loaded the truck with the family of a plumber, from whom my mother had gotten contacts to the Russians. We drove towards Brno, where we arrived around midnight. In the middle of the city, the truck suddenly stopped. My parents and the other family got terribly scared because they had heard earlier that some Russians had had presents given to them, had driven the loaded Germans only a short distance, then had thrown them off the back and driven away. But such were not 'our' Russians. They just had a breakdown, one tyre burst. Unfortunately, the spare wheel was under a pile of potatoes. I remember my parents later telling me that the Russians had worked up a good sweat during the replacement, until sweat was running down their backs. So they quickly pulled out the spare wheel, and one Russian said to my mother: 'If the police come now, I'll sit in the back with my gun and shoot in the air, don't be afraid, the driver will drive on.' After changing the bike, the journey continued. Just before the Austrian border a Russian came again, saying: 'Now the border will come, but there's no way we're going to stop. But the barrier wasn't down, it was up, and nobody noticed that we were already in Austria. My parents were probably still scared, but we were already in Austria. In the morning at five or five-thirty we arrived in Vienna. We stepped out onto the sidewalk in the city center, more or less without our luggage. My sister was still small, she was five and a half, she had a leather bag. In October, the weather was already cold. And then we still had a potato sack with a piece of bread and bacon. We all had warm clothes on, but we couldn't take anything else. So we stood there in the street and my parents always said later how happy they were to be free at that time."

"Young partisans came to Svitavy and heard that prisoners were being tortured in the big house with the construction company. They said there was a capitalist there who needed revenge. And it was at that moment that my father returned home. Probably from neighbors or from other people the partisans learned that it was the local builder Seidl, and they must have assumed that he was also the Nazi who had tortured prisoners and prisoners from the concentration camps there. He must be punished, eliminated, punished by death. And that's what happened. I still carry the following as a deep trauma: one day, it must have been in the middle of June 1945, partisans came to our house in Svitavy with guns and asked for my father. He had barely been home for a few days. And they said to him, 'You are under arrest,' and to my mother, who spoke Czech, they said directly, 'It is the capitalist who is going to be shot.' He was to be taken away and shot immediately. But the way things were going, even these partisans couldn't shoot him on the spot, they had to take him to the national committee. I still remember which building he was in at that time. They took my father there and held a quick trial. One of the judges, however, was Mr. Huska, a former employee of my father's company. When Mr Huska saw that they were bringing my father as a prisoner, he immediately said to the partisans: 'You can't shoot him, he's an anti-fascist, he wasn't here at all during the war. And he made sure that my father was not shot, in spite of the voices of the other colleagues."

"The farmhouse was located in Lačnov about two or three kilometres from us, a beautiful square farmhouse. My uncle had the great misfortune that a week or two before May 9, before the end of the war, Soviet dredgers bombed it because they saw the German army camped in the yard, and the farmhouse burned down completely. Only black ruins remained, but the cellar could be entered and remained intact. Then, when women were dragged out of the houses at night, my mother, us children and my aunt, her sister, fled to their brother Franz in the cellars, above which only the burnt ruins remained. There we hid. My mother and aunt would go to hide in the attic of my grandfather's outhouse, which remained intact and is still standing today. At that time, we were always hiding and hiding."