Lucie Kohoutková

“The war front went from Silesia, and the Germans were fleeing from there. They were passing by with their wagons and they even carried infants with them. They had no food for them, and when they brought them to the institute for infants, the babies were often already half-dead. They were leaving them there and the infants were dying one after another. Many babies have died there. Nobody knew anything about them. The families kept going and we did not know where they eventually ended. A child had only its name and that was all. One day after the war I was listening to the radio, and the Red Cross was searching for a child whom some parents had left in Radošov. I was asking myself: should I call them or should I not? It would be probably better for them not to know.”

“The other mom had a child during the war. She suffered from tuberculosis since her youth, and since Hitler cared for this, the child could not stay at home. She was not even allowed to breastfeed, and so they took the baby away and placed it in the institute for infants. This institute was located in Kysíbl-Radošov, about half an hour from Karlovy Vary. It was run by the sisters of the Congregation of the Holy Cross and it was a very progressive institution for that time. They already used glass boxes and they had the wards divided into a ward for children three months to six months old, another for toddlers up to two years, and down on the ground floor they had older children, boys and girls from two to six years. It was thus an infants’ institute, but for children up to six years. We were going there to see the little boy. But he died of diphtheria. His mother then had a second child, and that baby was placed there as well. This boy’s brother is still alive. He was in the institute until the end of the war and only then were they allowed to take him home when the regulation was annulled. German children were deported and they brought Korean children there instead.”

“Then I came back to Cheb and I hoped to finally complete my studies, but they closed down the school. The communists came there and it was over with the school, with the convent and everything. It was simply the end and the convent closed down on September 14, 1950. We were only candidates and we had not professed our vows yet. There were three of us and then there were Czech nuns. On September 15th, a bus arrived and they ordered us to get on and announced that those of us who were Czech nationals would be taken to the provincial home in Kroměříž. The other nuns were German. When this happened the mother superior was in Prague where she was negotiating the deportation of the German sisters. They left the German nuns there, because they could not be interned. We thought that we were going to Moravia; but nobody knew anything. They brought us to Bohosudov to the Jesuit monastery. They must have transported the monks away the previous night, because when we came there, there were still cups on the table.”