Věra Moníková

“When we arrived to the railway station in Breslau, they looked at our hands, and since I was a seamstress, I had fine hands, and thus they hired me to work in a factory which produced pig brushes.” – “And the other girls?” – “All of us were there. On the railway station they made us stand in a row and the factory owner Klinge was selecting workers. He liked me and thus he picked me up immediately.”

“One of the German women visited us after the fall of Germany. She stayed in our house for about a week and mom told me: ´She cannot be here – a German woman! Look at the people here.´ They would have sent her to a camp. She spent a week with me and then mom would not even let me go out with her, because she was afraid. People were evil, and if they saw that you had a German in your house – in view of what the Germans had done... I used to go to work as a seamstress for her family, and that’s how this friendship between two strangers formed – a German and a Czech.”

“I was going to work for German women, and we also had rehearsals with the choir.” – “What kind of choir was it, only Czech women?” – “There were teachers, there was a doctor among them, and there were only about three of us girls. It was a nice organized group, and we didn’t spend the rehearsals just chatting.” – “Did you also perform in public?” – “Oh, if only you had seen it, there were many Germans.” – “Tell me more about it!” – “If only you could see it – there was a large auditorium full of Germans, and they were all clapping their hands and applauding.” – “What songs did you sing?” – “Czech songs? – “Czech songs for German people?” – “Yes, Czech songs. And I sang in German, too, if they wanted it.”

“How did you wash clothes there?” – “That was all right, in that camp we had a big dormitory, and next to it there was another room where we could wash our clothes. Or he let us bathe in the factory. We just managed. What was worse was the toilet – we could not go out at night, because there were rats. The rats were watching us through the window, and they would even get inside through the chimney. We thus had to try to keep the place warm to drive them away. There were bed-bugs, which normally were not bothering me, but it’s true that on the last day my blanket was just covered with them. When I arrived home, I had to stand in the backyard and undress completely and mom washed all my clothes.”