Stefanie Marek

“In the morning I went to say goodbye to my cousin, to tell her that I was going to Austria. It was five in the morning and I asked her for a blanket, so that I could wrap it around my body to keep warm. Then I told her that I would like to walk around our house one more time, to see it for the last time. She walked with me to the Dyje River and she showed me where I should cross to the other side. She advised me that I had to keep cover so that nobody would see me. She told me that I would see a wood on the right hand side, which was visible from a distance, there were soldiers up there. I had to run through the wood and when I got out, I would already be in Austria, in Breinerhof. I had a red hat, I completely forgot that it was red… Then I crossed the Dyje, I was lying on the surface and crawling. One kilometre took me two or three hours, I think. The river was frozen, but not near the banks, and I kept falling in constantly. But I didn’t feel anything, my wet clothes or the cold, I didn’t care. Then I saw the soldiers, I went on, and ran through the wood, and there were already some people there. I don’t know what they were doing, they were picking something from a frozen pile covered with ground to keep it from freezing, they were working there. They were speaking in Czech. Christ, what now? I kept listening to find out where I was, they were speaking Czech and so I thought I was still in Czechoslovakia. I asked in Czech, I could already speak Czech, and they replied in German: ´ Sie sind am Breinerhof.´ ´You’re in Breinerhof.´ Thus I knew I was in Austria. I felt as if a stone fell off my heart.”

It would be nice if people understood each other. It doesn’t matter what nationality they are, whether they’re white or black or whatnot, it doesn’t matter what religion they have. That isn’t important. They should understand each other, everyone should, and there’d be peace on earth.

“We were going there when our son was little. If I ask him to go with me now, he tells me: ´Mom, why do you still want to go there?´ It would be the same as if we wanted the people who now live in our houses to return them to us. That would mean another displacement of people who haven’t done any harm to us. We are already here now. I don’t wish anything bad for anyone, only for those who harm me. I don’t wish anything good for the man who had kicked us out of our house back then. But the people who live there now cannot be blamed for anything.”

"[Croats] were merry people, they could come to terms with everyone, whether it was a German or a Czech, it didn’t matter. Everyone got on together. There are always some families that don’t fit in with others, but when I was a child in Frélichov, I didn’t understand that, because we all got on well with each other."

“How did you speak at home before the war when you were still together?” “Croatian.” “And where have you learnt German?” “I attended only the German school in Drnholec. Parents spoke only German with my youngest sister Helenka, but she could understand Croatian as well. However, we didn’t know a single word in Czech.” “And why were they speaking German with the youngest one?” “I don’t know. When she was with friends, they spoke Croatian, but I don’t know why we began speaking German to her at home, probably in order that she wouldn’t have problems in school.”

"The ‘property takers’ started coming as early as 1945. The first who came was a solitary man. He stayed with us for two, three weeks, and then left. He appeared just in time for the harvest, in June, July, he reaped everything up and was gone. Then one family came, a woman with two children, I didn’t see the man anywhere, I don’t know where he was. They were here two, three months, then they took everything that would fit in their hand cart, plates and the such, things that weren’t heavy, and off they went. Then some others came. All in all, we had three or four of them here. The last ones even took the table, the bed, furniture. I have no idea where they went. They just kept picking where there was something left to take. And then they took it."

“The partisans said that we were Germans. We were no Germans, we used to be Austrians before, but not Germans. We were always Austrians and Croats, not Germans. But they gave us this stamp because when we spoke Croatian or German, we were Germans for them.”

"It was terribly hot one day. They stopped the water, and so we didn’t have any water to cook with, not even to drink. We had to go and get it from the swimming pool. There were tadpoles in it, and we were to cook soup out of it. But when you see something like that, you’re not going to eat it. Adding to that, the water was green and stank. Some of them ate it – those who were really starving. Then we were visited by Grandma Hubená, my father’s mother, and she brought us bean soup from Frélichov. She had a six-litre milk pail, she walked all the way from Frélichov with the pail on a cart, and she brought us bean soup with noodles. It was delicious!"