Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

akery until the end of the war. He could have returned to Boskovštějn after the war ended,
but in the meantime, during the war, a young gamekeeper with two children started to work
there and my father said that he wouldn’t like to drive him away. All our relatives, from my
mother’s side as well as from my father’s, were in Znojmo. My sister and I used to smuggle
things for them all the time because my mother worked for farmers during the war and used
to get food from them. My sister and I would stuff our bras with lard, salami, flour, poppy seed
etc., and that’s how we smuggled it. Since my relatives had chosen Czech citizenship 2 , they got
only half-sized food rations and were struggling to feed their children. The end of the war saw
our family in Černín. We experienced the Russians going wild there. The Army of Malinovsky
marched through and its soldiers raped women all over South Moravia. That’s why our parents
shut my sister and I in our cellar and we spent the end of the war there. A doctor told me later
that 60 women were raped around Jevišovice area and 7 of them died due to incurred health
problems. One man was shot by the Russians when he was trying to protect his daughters and
another man had to watch the rape of his wife. It was atrocious and that’s why we were not
in favour of the Russians.
What was it like after the war?
They forced the Earl to move away and his castle was turned into a senior citizen’s home, but
that was not until 1948. In 1945 all his property was confiscated because he was an Austrian
citizen. He resettled and he started a rifle factory in Vienna and sold guns and ammunition
there. The Countess left to live with her daughter in Italy and the marriage probably fell apart.
My father got an offer for a job as a gamekeeper in the border area in Vranov nad Dyjí. He got
a beautiful hunting ground and a lovely house with lots of bedrooms. My mother didn’t want
to move there though, because the house was on the side of a hill and to enter the barn and
the shed you had to climb steps. The house was below a castle and nearby was a road leading
across the border. I finished my senior school during the war and my parents got me a job
with a doctor’s family where I took care of the doctor’s child and cleaned his medical offices.
He was a doctor and had a dentist working with him. When the war ended, I wanted to study
painting, but my parents didn’t agree, so they got me a place in a so-called dumpling school,
a school for housewives. Eventually, I only stayed for one year. I fell in love with a soldier who
was already engaged, so I knew I had to forget him. My sister fell in love with a member of the
State secret police 3 . He was a former partisan. To forget the soldier I found a job far away in
Aš 4 , at the western tip of the Republic and I and my sister started to work there from September
1, 1946 until 1948. Then I had a disagreement there with a man and I moved to Brno. There
I worked at a lawyer’s office. I minded his two sons and did cleaning for him. I read a lot of
books there. I also attended a painting course and wanted to study at an art college for a year.
Once, a professor who led the painting course came to me to sort out some social papers in
order to get me a scholarship for the talented, but then he asked me, “Are you a member of
2 Choosing citizenship – After signing the Munich Treaty in September 1938, according to which Czechoslovakia surrendered
a part of its border regions (Sudetenland amongst others) to Germany, the Czechs who stayed in the Sudetenland,
as well as those who moved away, were asked to state whether they wanted Czech or German nationality. However, those
who claimed Czech nationality lost the right to live at their original address and those who chose German nationality were
in danger of being drafted into the Wehrmacht.
3 State secret police known under the abbreviation StB, was a political police force in Czechoslovakia during the communist
era.
4 Aš – a town in Western Bohemia.
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