“There were a lot of prisoners who had a much harder life than we had. They weren’t allowed to run for cover during air raids. When there was an air raid, we were supposed to run as far away from the factory as we could and to hide somewhere in its surroundings. They had to remain in the factory. They were very miserable. Once, there was a very devastating air raid, maybe the most destructive one I’ve ever seen there. It was too late to run away even for us. A sixteen-year old German girl grabbed my hand and pulled me in the air-raid shelter that was right in the center of the factory. That was strictly forbidden because the shelter was only for Germans. It was heavily fortified and coated with concrete plates. It resisted the bombing although there were some injuries. I survived because I could hide in that bunker. That girl saved my life on that day. I tried to find her afterwards because I remembered her name but I’ve never seen her again – just couldn’t find her. I owe my life to that girl. I only realized this after some time had passed after the end of the war.”
“Once we were there… this concerns a Czech guy. When somebody was slacking off, the Germans would torment him. They weren’t allowed to kill him because they would be missing him in their records. Well, they could make up a pretext, of course… They set up a ‘Bummelantenlager’, a camp for slackers that was surrounded by barbed wire and had no walls. There, they could torment the prisoners, setting dogs at them, keeping them hungry and so on. They erected this camp right behind our house in Nordhausenu. Once I and Maruš, a friend of mine, went for a walk, it was towards the evening. We walked past that camp and we heard someone saying: ‘bread, bread’! They put a Czech guy in the camp. We didn’t know him. So we returned home and picked up everything that was edible – food leftovers, old bread crusts and the like and we threw it over the fence. Years and years later, I actually met that guy. Can you imagine this? We had some reunion and we talked together and he said that he had been in that Bummelantenlagru, that they were torturing him there. One day, he noticed somebody walking past and he heard us speaking Czech. That’s why he called out to us. His name was Šafránek. That was extraordinary.”
“I still don’t figure why there’s always police around when a couple of Neo-Nazis show up. I hate this. A few Neo-Nazis and other extremists keep the police and the politicians busy but they still haven’t made illegal the Communist party that committed an awful lot of crimes in our society. The party is still in existence today. I don’t understand that. They did so many evil things in this country. They plundered the countryside and people are only now coming to realize how much the Communists have devastated the country. My uncle was a simple farmer and he couldn’t bear it when they confiscated his horses. It was unbearable for him and he hung himself.”
“In Ostrava, one of the pieces I beat our Czechoslovak national team. That’s how they noticed me and they hired me as a coach of the national team. It was funny at that competition at Ostrava. The miners in the audience demanded a repetition of that piece. They were insisting on the repetition of that piece because they liked it so much. They were stomping their feet till the girls repeated the piece. That day I got so many points that the coaches noticed me and recommended me to become the national team coach. They wanted me to train with the national team for the world championship. I got a team of girls. It was girls from Moravia and there was also a Slovak girl. This was quite a success. An unknown Maurerová from Czechoslovakia came to the world championship. We weren’t even allowed to talk to the Czechs that emigrated from Czechoslovakia and who came to the championship. They were exiles and that’s why we weren’t allowed to talk to them. It was terrible. We only could talk to them later when they were permitted to come back here. Then we talked about it, belatedly. But it was a complicated situation. We were successful ranking second after the first round. The Soviet gymnasts with their coach Viktor Sergejev were, of course, unrivalled but Czechoslovakia followed suit and landed on the second place. The next place went to the Bulgarians as far as I can remember. That was the first round where we succeeded immensely. In the second round, we lost the cones. The exercise we performed was quite risky but I didn’t want to lower its level of difficulty. Our referees didn’t recommend it to me either so I kept the original, demanding the setup of it. They said, whatever outcome, don’t lower the difficulty. Coaches from all over the world came to see our trainings.”
“So the rooms. There were double beds on the rooms – so-called ‘Doppelbetten’. I have no idea where that came from but even as we were arriving there, the rumor was spreading that each room will elect its own mom. Because that was what we were missing there the most – our moms. And when you look at the creations that originated there, all of them are ‘to the honor of my mom’. So we simply selected a girl that we hadn’t known previously and told her: ‘you’re going to be our mom’. Usually she would be a bit thicker or she just seemed to be more skilful than the others. Her task was to be our arbiter, to judge all of the minor disputes that came up every day. We would also confess to her which gave us great relief. But once we chose badly and our mom wasn’t a good person. I’m not blaming her for that but I don’t like to remember her. I don’t know what her name was; we simply called her ‘mom’. ‘That’s important, mom, or mom, this is what happened. Our mom was our supervisor; she was elected from our ranks. Even though we didn’t know each other, we always got along.”
Anna Maurerová was born on March 3, 1924, in Chlumčany. Her childhood was greatly influenced by her father‘s profession who was a gendarme. Her father was often relocated to various posts and therefore their family was frequently moving. They lived mostly in the borderlands that were settled by the Germans. Mrs. Maurerová studied at a business academy in Pilsen where she graduated in 1943. Afterwards, she worked as an assistant in the municipal hospital in Pilsen. In 1944-1945 she was a slave laborer working in the armaments industry in the Reich. She worked in the Junckers factory in Köthen, Nordhausen and later also in Prague Vysočany. After the war, she returned to the municipal hospital in Pilsen and completed her education. She studied eleven years at secondary school, pedagogical school and logopedics. Her career began in 1951 when she started to work in a hospital as a clinical logopedist. She stayed in this job until her retirement in 1987. She was also very engaged in sports and physical education. She is the co-founder of Czechoslovak women‘s handball and modern gymnastics for women. For a long time (till 1962) she was an active gym competitor herself. Afterwards she became the coach and a choreographer of young Czechoslovak women gymnasts. She earned a bronze medal in 1977 in Basel at the world championship where she was the coach of the Czechoslovak women‘s team. They earned it for a group choreography with cones. After 1990, she continued to create big choreographies for Czech Sokol rallies. She was awarded for her engagement, receiving a large number of decorations - for example The faithfulness medal by the Czech Sokol community, the Golden Medal (by Sokol again), The City of Pilsen Award and the Award of the governor of the region of Pilsen and the Hall of Fame. Her curriculum vitae was published in the Swiss encyclopedia „Who is Who“ and the American Biographical Institute lists her as one of the „great women of the 21th century“.
