Josef Uchytil

“In 1948 they told us they would move us somewhere to the Polish frontier. The next day, my mom wakes me up at night and tells me my dad is here. He had been gone in Austria for about half a year but somehow figured out that they’re planning to relocate us, so he came home to take us away. I was glad he came back home. I said: ‘I’ll go with dad’. But my sister Minka had a boyfriend in Frélichov and wasn’t too keen on leaving the place. My mom had to try hard persuading her. Finally, however, she succeeded and my sister agreed. My dad hid in the attic. The next day, we got a visit from some people who were to ‘inherit’ the house from us. They wanted to take a look at the house. Well, they liked it. My mom hid the ladder to the attic in the hay. The guy actually wanted to climb up to the attic and take a look at it as well. My mom pretended she’s looking for the missing ladder but then my sister said we had borrowed it to our grandma and he gave up. I didn’t know exactly when we would leave. About midnight, maybe half past, dad climbed down from the attic and we went on our journey to Austria. We didn’t take anything with us except for about three kilos of lard and a blanket. We set out on that trip. The Thaya river was overflowing with water, it was sometime in June and the grain was knee-high. We started at our house and walked past the graveyard, then behind the cellars, crossed the footbridge over the river Jevišovka and waited for the others to catch up with us. We crossed the meadows and now had to cross the Thaya. The water was reaching my dad’s shoulders. The current was strong and my dad was afraid we would drown. My sister managed to swim across the river herself. I got carried across by my dad as was my mom who couldn’t swim. We crossed the river unharmed. Then we continued to Wildendürnbach.”

“The Czech policemen came and took my father away. They locked him up in a POW detention camp in Znojmo and kept him there for a couple of months, maybe half a year. Once, me, my mother and my sister came to visit him. We were only allowed to come to the gate, not farther. I could see a place behind the fence with lined-up prisoners. The warders – Czech policemen – were playing a game with their inmates called ‘around comes Pešek’. The warders were passing the lined-up inmates and always hit them with a belt. When someone moved just a little bit, they took him aside and beat him up. My dad was chatting with my mom at the gate and I was watching this spectacle. I was watching their game. ‘Around comes Pešek’. If someone wavered after the blow, he got beaten up. The inmates were German soldiers.”