They couldn’t understand why we were helping Czechs
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Countess Anna Maria Waldstein-Wartenberg was born on 30 April 1928 in Borovina near Třebíč. Her father and younger sister died soon after. Another sister died in 1945, it was after the war when Anna Maria was staying for a short time with her uncle in Austria. Her older brother Berthold enlisted in the army and was taken prisoner, but eventually made it to Vienna. In 1947 Anna Maria also moved there with her mother and grandmother. At first they lived in Pressbaum near Vienna, but because of the commute they bought an apartment in Vienna. Anna Maria Waldstein worked as a secretary in several companies, studied in England and visited Rome. Very important were her volunteer activities within the Malteser Aid. Together with her brother and sister-in-law, she was involved in helping refugees from both the Hungarian People’s Uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968. She helped organize the distribution of medicines to Eastern Bloc countries. She was in constant contact with the Czechoslovakia and considers it her homeland. She emphasizes this also in her book ‘When Třebíč was still Waldstein’s’, which was launched in her presence in Třebíč in 2014.