“As the Germans were fleeing, a locked green armoured vehicle remained standing next to our house. People in the street kept passing by the car. And when the Russians arrived, they opened the vehicle. There was food inside, there was so much food! And a Russian man, his moustache looked like Stalin’s, was standing there and he was throwing the food from the car to the people. I was sitting in the window again, and the window was open and he looked at me and said: ‘Little girl, here you go... Little girl, there is for you...’ And he threw something to me. It looked like the Fidorka cookie that we have today. A Czech woman, some woman from the street, quickly approached me and she snatched the cookie from my hand. The Russian stared at her and he ordered her to give it back to me. And she said: ‘She is a German, she is a German!’ Well, the Russian took about four or five of those Fidorka cookies and he got down from the car and walked to my window and he said: ‘Little girl, this is for you…’ and he gave them to me. So my memories of Russians are relatively nice.”
“I am smiling now, but I can tell you, those times were terrible. When I think of it... It was bad for us, from both sides. During the era of the German rule, we were hunted by Germans and after the war we were hunted by Czechs. During the German rule, we were in the ‘reichstag’ all the time. I call it ‘reichstag,’ but it was actually in Louny… When you walk from the train station in Louny, and you come to the town square and go toward the church, there is a building in front of you. I think that the building is still there. And there was an arched gate and a rounded signboard above the gate. I still call the building ‘reichstag.’ We were there all the time. They kept summoning us. They wanted to take me away from my mom and place me into a German family to be reeducated. German reeducation. My mom had so much hassle with it... But on the other hand, there were other people, too. When we were there one day, I entered the office with my mom and I was prattling something in Czech, as a little child. And some woman, who must have been a hell of a German, yelled at me: ‘Get out!’ I had to stand in the hallway. We were going there very often and one day there were about four women standing in the hallway. It was actually not a hallway, but quite a large passage. They were standing in a circle and talking in German. But suddenly one of them stepped aside and she approached us, my mom and me. She told my mom: ‘Always forget something at home. Never bring all the documents.’ She said this to her in Czech. And then she returned to the circle of the women and she was speaking German again. She gave us a good advice. We like to remember her.”
“We played with Hanka in the chateau’s garden. It used to be part of the chateau, but later it became open for people. And people who had geese would always let them graze there. And the geese later learnt to go there and back home on their own. We had a blanket spread out there, and those little children’s suitcases, and we had dolls and doll clothes in them. I had a tiny cup. And this girl Hanka wanted it so badly. I didn’t want to give it to her. But she started pulling it from my hand. There was an older woman who lived above the chateau garden… forgive me my words, but I will say it in the exactly same way as she did… She told Hanka: ‘Grab a stone and kill that German bitch!’ I came home crying. Nobody can imagine what it was like after the war. We had to wear armbands on our sleeves. White bands. We were only allowed to go to shops at certain times, otherwise we could not go.”
Markéta Šťastná, née Jochmannová, was born on April 25, 1939 in Bučovice near Brno. Her father was a German and her mother was a Czech. They moved to northern Bohemia where her parents worked on the homestead in Débeř. However, her father had to join the wehrmacht in 1942 and Markéta thus lived alone with her mother in Peruc. They constantly had to fight the authorities that tried to take little Markéta away from her mother and have her undergo German reeducation. At the end of the war, Markéta witnessed disorder in the village. Wehrmacht soldiers were passing through the region as they were fleeing and so-called Vlasov army soldiers (soldiers of the Russian Liberation Army) used their flat for accommodation. Red Army soldiers also used their home several times when they passed through Peruc. Officials from the National Security Police Corps came to confiscate their property already on May 6, 1945. Markéta and her mother had to relocate several times and repeatedly submit petitions for a provision of housing, for a certificate confirming their Czechoslovak citizenship and for Markéta’s admission to the first grade of elementary school. They often had to face hatred from some people in Peruc. Markéta’s father was captured by the English in Egypt during the war. Only in May 1946 Markéta and her mother learnt that he was alive and about his whereabouts. In 1948 their father was released from a POW camp and sent to East Germany. He illegally crossed the border and remained with the family for two weeks. Then he went to surrender himself to the authorities and he spent half a year in prison. The Jochmann family then continued to live and work on the Débeř farm. In 1962 they moved from there to Čechy pod Kosířem in Moravia, where Markéta still lives today.
