Josef Tejkl

“Jablonné was in the protectorate, we were in Sudetenland. A Czech village, there were only four or three Germans registered. And my father was transferred to joiner’s shop in Žichlínek. He had to cross the borders to get to Jablonné. No bus did drive from here, the nearest drove from Výprachtice to Lanškroun. And there [in Žichlínek] was some strict German. In the winter, my father had to be waiting on the bus in Výprachtice at half five in the morning. At that time there were severe winters, snowdrifts, a lot of snow and the bus did not come. So, they went to Žichlínek on foot; that is fifteen kilometres from here. They came there tired in ten o’clock and were beaten with a cane by their boss, the German. He did not care that the bus did not come.”

“After my father died, I started the school in Výprachtice in autumn. We had potatoes in the field. My sister went to flax scutching factory in Čenkovice, so she was not home and my mother was left on her own. So, after school I went with children from Čenkovice to their village and from there in the field. My mother took some food for me and I changed clothes and we harvested potatoes together. We had two cows but they were not listening to me so my mother led the cows and I controlled a potato harvester. I was small. The potato harvester had three wheels; it had two tilling wheels in the front and one controlling wheel with a handlebar in the back. And because I was small, the handlebar was well above my head. You can imagine how it looked like when we were harvesting…”