“Our daily regime was something like this: we didn’t have a minute of free time, you could say, though that might be exaggerating slightly. Work was from six to two, then a lunch break. We had about an hour of free time including lunch, because we had the same shoes, everything we used at the construction site, and we had to clean it up. Then in the afternoon it was military employment. Either some lecture, or the training grounds.” (Q: “What did you do at the training grounds, if you didn’t have weapons?”) “Without weapons we still had to crawl on the ground, march, right turn, about turn. It was horribly annoying. And we came back from that, had dinner, and then we had to have our time employed some more, there were hobby clubs.”
(Q: “And you stayed at the farmer’s the whole year?”) “I was there a whole year, and maybe some more to boot, I can’t remember the exact number of days.” (Q: “How did they behave to you? Was there any animosity?”) “Oh yes, an awful much. You have no idea how much. Worse than dogs were Germans. Not even human.” (Q: “You weren’t even entitled to ration tickets after the war, were you?”) “Oh, we were. We did get ration tickets.” (Q: “How did the thing with the farmer end after the year?”) “I was only there for the summer season, and when he didn’t have any more work for me, he sent me back to the labour camp. I’d hardly gone in and I was back out again, when the one farmer returned me, another picked me up. He was a vulcaniser, I don’t think they even have that profession nowadays. And he picked me up, and he treated me quite decently. I could eat my fill there, in Jičín. They treated me decently, but the farmer, he had two daughters about my age. No way were they allowed to even look at me. After that year I received citizenship and my Dad came to take me home.”
“I happened to come out, and, well simply I was there, it wasn’t a backyard, it was off to the side of the house, I was doing something, loitering about. The militiamen came along, they were only a bit older than me, they greeted me, and you can tell a German by his Czech. So they realised I don’t speak Czech so well, that I have an accent. And straight off: ‘Are you German, what about Hitlerjugend?’ And I had a revolver pressed to my chest.” (Q: “How did it work out? Did they leave?”) “Well, it worked out fine, thank God, that’s why I’m here.”
(Q: “Did many of your neighbours from the German side have to join the Wehrmacht? Did any of your relatives go?”) “Well, my brother did. That was why, when he came back from the war -” (Q: “What year was your brother born?”) “- 1926, they drafted him into the Czech army, and that was the last straw for him, he hated the military, the war, and everything, and so he said he wouldn’t go, and he legged it. He lived the rest of his life in Australia.” (Q: “And how did your brother’s emigration affect you?”) “Well, for me it meant being questioned by the police, and then being drafted to the AEC, I guess.” (Q: “And he wasn’t in the air force, the Luftwaffe?”) “No, he was, how should I say it, quite hard-headed, so they punished him quite a bit. He told us that he couldn’t fly because his nasal passages weren’t open enough. So he was with the ground personnel. And he was punished, disciplined - they put him down in a hole at the airfield. Just some hole where he couldn’t even move, and he had to stand for I don’t know how long. Maybe 24 hours. Either way he was in that hole, and the airfield was attacked by an air raid, and he had to stay there with all the explosions, all the horror around him.”
Otto Brádler was born on 26 April 1930 to a German mother and a Czech father living in the seclusion of the Jizerské Mountains. Otta‘s older brother had to sign up for labour service at seventeen years of age, and was alter drafted into the Wehrmacht. He escaped home at the end of the war and in the aftermath was placed in a labour camp for his Czech-German origin, as was Otto. The witness worked first for a farmer who behaved very badly to him. Moving to a second farmer was a big improvement, however. After working off a year, Otto received Czech citizenship and could return home. He graduated as an electrician in Jablonec and found employment at the Electro-assembly Plant in Liberec. In 1951 he received his conscription card and was drafted into the Auxiliary Engineering Corps in Komárno. He spent a month in boot camp and was then transferred to Jihlava for six months, later to Hradec Králové. While on leave one time, he met his future wife, and so he remained in Hradec Králové. After serving in the AEC for 31 months he returned to his original employment at the Electro-assembly Plant. His German descent was no longer an issue, but the stigma of an „auxer“ (a member of the AEC labour corps, frequently a form of political punishment - transl.) stuck him and his family for many years. Otto Bradler passed away on March, the 15th, 2024.
