Marie Hofbauerová

“When my cousin Emička was leaving we had horses and my dad used to collect eggs from ten villages – he bought them from people. My mum prepared the deck they put everything they could in there. A hay wagon always left the farmhouse, and the people got in there with the stuff they could carry and went away. I did not see it because I just came back. My mum took Ema and her husband to the border on a horse-drawn carriage. When they arrived at the borders, the ones who had come there earlier were already waiting for them. And they took everything from those who just came because they lived in poverty. My mum said: It was horrible I could not watch it.”

“There was a teacher called Oberlehrer. He knew us all because he had been there before the annexation. He used to come to the classroom and asked: ´Who claims to be Czech?´ And (told us) to raise our hands. So, we raised our hands, he went to us, and he slapped all of us. It was horrible. And it would happen every morning as a warmup. He would come in the morning, ask us the same thing again and he would slap each of us. My sister sat in front of me and because she was younger, he would always slap me and let her be. And when he saw that I was not crying, he started pulling on her earlobe and she cried. And when I saw that she was crying I started to cry as well.”

“When we used to walk home from school, six of us went together. We used to walk the longest way through the entire village as we lived at its end. And the road builder used to walk towards us on purpose, and we had to greet him by saying: ´Heil Hitler.´ And if we had not greeted him, he would have beaten us. We often did not want to and once we were walking home with the Pokornýs boys who lived near the street. We were already opposite their gate, and he was just coming out of the curve. There used to be a gutter, there is pavement now there. Franta jumped across the gutter and thought he would run away from him and would not have to greet him. And he managed to run up to him and he slapped him there, it was horrible. He slapped him in front of their gate. And we came home crying and said we would not go to school anymore: ´He beats us there and when we go home, the other one is always waiting for us…´ And it happened daily. He was a fanatic, he used to wait for us every day. The Pokornýs were three children – two boys and a girl, we were two and Jana also used to go with us, she lived below us.”

“The Fučíks who lived below us had three boys. They were Czech and the one who was enlisted served with a farmer. My dad asked him to give us a lift but told him I did not have a border crossing pass so if they would let us go at the border. And Karel said: ´Do not worry about it, I will manage they will let us pass.´ So we got on a horse-drawn carriage with a wicker canopy. My dad and Karel sat up front on the coach box and we – Anička with two children sat on the deck, they covered me a little so that nobody could see me, and we set off. I was frightened about whether we would get there. When we approached the border, the customs officer had a wooden hut there. He poured out of the hut and started waving his arms to stop us. Back then it was just people crossing on foot, and suddenly there were horses. Karel had smart horses, so he smacked his lips, and the horses reared up and galloped past the customs officer so that he barely jumped out of the way, he (Karel) let them run as long as we could be seen and then slowed them down. That is how I got to Prague, but I could not return home. When they were returning, they stopped by the hut, and he threatened to report the fact they had not stopped. And Karel said: ´As you went out and were waving your hands, the horses stampeded and I could not hold them.´ And that is how we crossed the border.”