Rozálie Tupá

“We stood in the park by the stately home, which was the gathering point. A commissar came up from Texlen, where Mum worked at the time. He called out three women, including my mother. He informed that they can stay if they want. But they were not allowed to return to their flat. They put us in the old Jewish prison by the factory. We slept there for one night. The next day they told us that if anyone was willing to take us in, we could stay with them. I slept at a friend’s house, and Mum and my younger brother lived with another family. That lasted a few months, and then they accommodated us in two rooms in a former pub in Temný Důl. In 1946 my [older] brother came home one evening, and my father the next. We were together again at last.”

“In 1969 we visited him for the first time. I was surprised that they allowed our whole family to go, all four of us. When we came back, they laughed at us. I remember the men looking out from the windows of the boiler room, shouting: ‘You’re such dolts that you came back!’ Except those people didn’t understand that we would’ve lost everything again, and we would had to have started from zilch all over again. Furniture, clothes, crockery. I saw how it was at my brother’s. He had a small house, yes, and some furniture that he’d been given, but overall he had hardly anything. At least we could then go visit wherever we pleased.”

“I know that I went to a nursery in Štýrec. That was a building inhabited by three German nuns, and they cared for the children. Mothers had to go to work after their postpartum period, so someone had to look after their children for them. Sometimes, the older children helped with that too.”

“The authorities had ordered us to go make hay. That was on Saturday afternoon. We heard how the Czechs shot three Germans. We had to dig a grave for them. I think they’re still buried by the stream on the way to Albeřice. One German woman lady had worked in England for many years. She was given a gold-plated revolver as a keepsake. They lived in the gamekeeper’s lodge. Her husband, the gamekeeper, hid the pistol in the manure. But they found it, and because [the Germans] possessed weapons, they shot them.”