“And this way I’m returning to the second half of the !1930’s when the effort to radicalise the German citizens was very successful. In the year 1937-38 when I started going to school, it had been already very bad. Once, even, I was five, they came to tell mom to go to a place, that I had been beaten by the Hitlerjugend boys. Although we teased them a bit, us, the little children, aged four, five, six, seven. We tied red, blue and white yarn to sticks, walked around the block and yelled ”Yuck, yuck, yuck, the SPD suck! [Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – Social Democratic Party of Germany]” One cannot wonder that we ended up the way we did.”
“He was a member of the choir, he studied at the Prague… his name was Frejka. They lived in a mansion because his father was an indeed notable economist, they lived somewhere at Hanspaulka [expensive neighbourhood of Prague] and the family was respected, his father was a real expert. Unfortunately, in that show trial, he was a part of the group [of the defendants], he ended very badly, as we know. His son, our friend, was under an immense pressure from the media, the Communist party, the cabinet. He was forced to, that they would write an article in his name and publish it in the Rudé Právo newspaper [‘Red Law’ – the most important daily paper, published by the Communist Party] and the article would be a condemnation. That he condemn his father, distance himself from him and express his indignation; how could he be in any way favourable towards that what they were tried for. They told him: ‘We will evict you from your house, kick you out from school, you will go to the worst possible places.’ That was how they tried to break him. The lad was totally down and out. He asked us: ‘So what now?’ We replied in unison: ‘You cannot do this, no way.’ At the end he didn’t do it, he did not comply, they evicted the family anyway.’ [The article in Rudé Právo was published without the permission of Tomáš Frejka.]
“Apart from these graduates of factory worker courses who enrolled the law school for the regular form and length of study, there was a category of specially picked individuals who were assembled at the Hořín castle near Mělník. They were there for a year, they even hadn’t graduated from secondary schools. And after that one year, there were named Doctors of Law. [JUDr. - Juris utrisque doctor, doctor of both {civil and church} law, the title awarded to five year long law school graduates, which was at the level of Master’s, not a Ph. D.]. The law school professors went there to give lectures, they were lodged in Hořín. And this sort of people were picked not for normal courts. They were installed in leading positions at the ministries, as heads of the district courts and local district courts. This wouldn’t be that much of a disaster in itself because they were Party officials first of all but mainly because they were to preside over cases of the Head I of the Penal Code which included grand treason, espionage [often used as indictment in political show trials] and so on and so on. For us, judges in penal law, it was quite some luck that we, the ordinary judges did not need to face the decision whether we would need to decide the Head I casaes because they were reserved for the graduates of this workers’ law school.”
“The days of the revolution were indeed dramatic and very dangerous. There were air raids, we spent most of our time in the shelter. We would obviously leave the shelter and go upstairs and we were supposed to go for a pilgrimage on the 6th of May [1945]. The women managed to bake some cakes in a mysterious way, I have no idea where they took the supplies because that was before the revolution started. The Germans came to inspect the flats, they were looking for weapons. So, upstairs from the cellar. We had a revolver. I have no clue where it was hidden, I would be making it up. A group of Germans came, they stood in the door and it was a bit chaotic and if they went in the flat, there would be a problem. I don’t remember who it was, who picked the revolver from wherever it was in the middle of the commotion and hid it behind the aquarium. It made no sense at all. My quick-witted mom picked a tray of cakes and stood in the door with those cakes and she somehow managed to pacify the Germans. They just took a cake and did not go inside. The revolution was pretty bad in our area, the Germans were tried to escape westwards so that they would be taken prisoner by the English or the Americans. Because they were terribly afraid – for a reason – of the Russians’ thirst for revenge.
I remember that within the span of those five days when I – call me a hero now – worked as a liaison between a resistance group and some partisans who were hiding on the nearby Baba hill and at that time, I just didn’t admit any risks. I was a thirteen years old girl and I scurried around with the messages from the partisans to the resistance and from resistance to the partisans. And I admit that I was really scared on the day before revolution, on the seventh or the sixth, when the Germans were running away through Kosmonosy in really large numbers. And just in front of the town council which was in the neighbourhood where we lived, they forced men to stand in two rows and they claimed that they would shoot every tenth of them. Without a reason, obviously, just to stir up some terror. And I was watching that. Luckily, this had not happened, they just passed through our tow. And on the 10th of May, finally, the Russian and Eastern armies started arriving, mostly Russians, though.”
“A seven-year-old child has a different view on the events, they see the world differently. I lived in a loving family, I had a plenty of friends and at first, we were not aware at all what the occupation meant. We lived in a small town, Kosmonosy, and the school, I mean the building, ended with the second grade for us. Then the Germans appropriated it for their purposes and now the question stood: what to do with us? Our family, mom and dad, cleared the living room, tables were moved in and I attended the third grade in our living room changed to a school classroom. Fourth grade was saved by Mr. Pažout, our beloved teacher, the most favorite of mine, cleared the attic of his cottage and for the whole fourth grade, we used to go to his attic. We were a great class, the teacher made the effort to guide us – we were not aware of it at the time, naturally – towards such a, I don’t really want to call it that way, patriotism, that would sound too posh, but that we are not just an occupied nation, that everything will change for better and that we are the best.”
“Obviously, on the first of September, but even before, which means approximately from about 1935 on, compared to the first years, unpleasant, grave and dangerous things started happening in Varnsdorf and in Sudeten in general. Until that year 1935, the society of the German majority and Czech minority, which held posts in the state institutions or in management of the two local major factories, which were owned by Jews. [sic!] It didn’t play a role until that year, until the half of the 1930’s. The neighbourly relationships were not problematic at all, we went to German shops, Germans went to the Czech pub and it seemed that the different nationalities didn’t play a role. Everything changed in about 1935 because as you know, in 1933, Adolf Hitler became a chancellor and thus the main political figure of Germany and here in the borderland, Hitler was supported in his politics and his “vision” by Konrad Henlein, I don’t know whether he was actually born in Liberec but he was active there. In the half of the 1930’s, it changed substantially because Hitler – and I don’t understand this – became the beloved Führer. The Germans listened to him because he presented his vision of Germany ruling the whole world, starting with Europe. Actually, he was a histrionic guy who just screamed and I don’t understand how he could influence the public opinion to such an extent that the Germans started showing an entirely different face than before. They stopped greeting us, there were various clashes, for example, Hitlerjugend, which were organised youth bands, beat me when I was five. And everything escalated in that 1938. We went to school on the 1st of September as usual and halfway in September, the teacher told us to return home straight away. And on the same day, in the afternoon, I carried my school bag on my back and my doll Vlasta in my hand, mom had a small suitcase and dad’s winter coat over her shoulder, we stood on the Varnsdorf railway station and we escaped from Varnsdorf full of nationalist passions to our grandma near Mladá Boleslav.“
Erna Machová, née Austová, was born on the 31st of March in 1932 in Varnsdorf. Shortly after she started going to school, the family escaped the nervous atmosphere of the borderlands to Josefův Důl near Mladá Boleslav where Erna’s grandmother lived. A year later, the family moved to Kosmonosy. Erna Machová studied at law school and became a judge at the district court in Liberec, later, after a reorganisation of district borders, she moved to Ústí nad Labem. She married and had two children, Helena and Milan. After the August 1968 occupation, she did not pass the background checks, she had to leave her job and until 1988, she worked in the legal department of Severočeské tukové závody [North Bohemian Fat Works]. After the 1989 revolution she was rehabilitated and resumed working as a judge at a court in Prague and later in Mladá Boleslav, until she was 72. Due to health reasons, she moved to Jablonec nad Nisou where she lived in 2022. We could record Erna Machová’s memories thanks to support of the town of Varnsdorf.
