Ferdinand Korbel

"Our cottage was occupied. There were three flats in it. We returned to the only one that was left vacant, and we were told that the family assigned to our cottage would move out of their own will. They did not really want to stay, and they even said they would hire their transport. Well, one day my mother had to go to the town of Trebon to arrange something with the documents, and when she came back they were gone. But they took everything with them! Our furniture was partially gone anyway - it was pilfered by villagers in the first wave when they looked for valuable loot. The guerillas "cleaned" the emptied houses too. Well, we had the cattle - it was taken by other farmers in the neighbourhood. We had only one cow left, an old one... and we started to farm again."

"It was Max who was behind it. Říha was a thief, nothing more than a scoundrel. Vitorazsko ruined Max. The individual could not have anything. The first day he returned, he gave a sort of a speech on the village square. “I will take my revenge on everyone”, he declared. - The day he returned from the concentration camp? - Yes. And take revenge, no"

"There was a lady, some Ms. Chmelař, a great revolutionary she was... She was running up and down the village shouting: ´Shoot the men and trample the women with kids in the mud!´ That was the day we were chased out. And she was running around and shouting this."

"If there were poor areas somewhere in the First Republic, then it was mostly the border regions. You had places where people received "beggars´ benefits" - but here people had to set their cottages on fire to survive. The houses were insured and burnt down. My folks did it twice in the First Republic. An insured house and burnt down, got it? The insurance company covered the loss. This was why almost all Tust farmers burnt their houses down. In Rapsach you had a fire almost daily... They were in cahoots with the firemen... before the fire brigade got together, the house was gone. The thing was to have the chimney fallen to get the best premium. That was the poverty like in the Weitra area. As if they tried to annoy the people here on purpose. You had a few people who were born as Czechs and their wives… they had Czech schools, they came mostly after 1920. They enjoyed friendly treatment by the authorities, they had better times. On the other hand, the original inhabitants... the officials tried to banish them."

"Well, we spoke Czech at home naturally, since Mother only moved away from the inland area in 1937. She just spoke Czech. And father? He had German schooling and spoke Czech well. But he could not write. Writing, you know... When I read some of his letters I could see right away that he had had no Czech schooling. His sister either. He had two sisters, one was here with us, and they transferred, chased us out together. Well, she neither really... when she wrote us from Austria, it was hard to decipher. By and large, we spoke Czech at home, we did."