Germans crossed the borders out, I crossed the borders in
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Anna Alma Vespalec, née Springel, was born on 31 December 1921 in Duisburg. She begot a child at a very young age, but the baby’s father refrained from taking care of them. The witness thus decided to accept an offer of the German state, and she left with her newborn from beleaguered Duisburg to Austria. She lived in an old mill near Liebnitz with other mothers and with Italian and Czechoslovak forced labourers. That is where she met her future husband Karel Vespalec, whom she married in Austria. After the war they moved to her husband’s parents in Petrovice near Moravský Krumlov. However, her husband’s family never accepted her as one of the family; on the contrary, they endeavoured to have her included in the deportation of Germans together with her first son Arnošt. They were not expelled in the end, thanks to the efforts of her husband. They later moved to Brno, where Anna Alma gave birth to a daughter, Dagmar. After her husband’s death in 1977, Alma Vespalec requested to be deported to Germany. However, in 2005 she returned to the Czech Republic. Until her death in November 2013 she was cared for in her own home in Vlasatice by her daughter Dagmar. Both her sons died before she did.
