I’m not condemning anyone for the resettlement of Germans. It was a different time.
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Karel Walter was born on the 26th of February 1940 in Ústí nad Labem. His mother Anna Wilhemina Walterová, née Albová, came from a Czech-German family. This was also true for his father, Karel Franz-Josef Walter, who was conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the war. He died in 1944 during a bombardment of the ship Tajo near Crimea on the eastern front. As a child, Karel experienced the fear of war bombing campaigns and also remembers the massacre of Germans in Ústí nad Labem in June 1944, which his family fortunately managed to avoid. The witness’s mother’s sisters Marie and Marta were resettled to Germany in the years 1945 to 1946. He stayed in Czechia with his mother and grandmother. He studied at a mining high school and devoted himself to mining for his entire life. In the year 1965 he married and had two children with his wife. In the year 2021 he still lived in Ústí nad Labem in an apartment, which he had gained in the year 1966. We were able to record the witness’s story thanks to support from Ústecký kraj.
