Alice Mayerová

"I was born to my mother after ten years of marriage, at seven months of pregnancy. My mom said, 'If it wasn't for your grandmother, you wouldn't be here because I didn't know what to do. When you were born, you were blue and purple and you were bursting with every colour and I was afraid to touch you.' So I was nursed by my grandmother who bathed and fed me. She fed me with a soggy bread and sugar wrapped in a piece of cloth, like a dummy. The bread and sugar was my sustenance. She would wrap me up and put me in the oven to keep me warm."

"Our family survived by having a 'volksliste' (German People's List). The Germans differentiated between volksliste 1, 2, and most of our people were forced to have volksliste 3 because of their work and because they didn't want to be expelled. That was the one that most ordinary people had, who were primarily concerned with their livelihood. We also had it. My father was out of work for some time and there was nothing to eat. I didn't notice it so much as a kid, but my parents were struggling to make a living, so my father used to hunt sparrows and crows in the winter. Together with the neighbours, he also used to fish illegally in the river. In the evening they'd set some baskets in the river and in the morning they'd go get the fish that got stuck in the basket. He did what he could."