Alena Ševčíková

"And right in the year 45, somehow in June, because the living conditions there weren't twice as good there [an apartment in Prague's Kobylisy], so my father took advantage of the fact that they were agitating at that time to occupy or settle the border, so he he signed up and was transferred to Rumburk, which is, I do not know if you know, all the way up in the north in Šluknov; at that time it was the district town of Rumburk. And there, because a lot of Germans lived there, and Beneš's decrees started to apply, so they were ready to be deported, but at the time when we came there, they were still there, but they no longer lived in their houses or apartments, but they were gathered in a kind of camps. They had to wear white ribbons to differentiate themselves, so there were a lot of flats left, a lot of houses that were available to the people who came. So either they returned there because they had lived there before, or they came there with the idea that they simply thought that somehow they would have a better opportunity to find a job and improve their social conditions, including better housing. . Well, it just wasn't easy, because there was someone who just signed up and stayed there and wanted to live there, then I think it was called the National Renewal Fund, and a contract was written with those people. And according to the property they acquired there, they had to repay it for twenty years."