Hermina Musilová

“But we didn’t have anything left. We really only had the one set of clothes we were wearing. I don’t even know any more. And we travelled in wagons. [Q: What kind of wagons were they?] Cattle wagons, which would be closed. When they stopped somewhere, they opened them. You could go to the toilet in a bucket. Then a few blokes came up, brought some black coffee to drink. That was it. My cousin was four years old at the time, and he kept screaming: ‘I want to go home, I want home!’ He didn’t like the dark. That’s the kind of transport it was. When we left Jihlava, another train came up from Brno – so many wagons – they hitched them up, added more wagons in Havlíčkův Brod. Then they said: ‘And now we’re crossing the border.’ We stopped there, Red Cross came to meet us. So many people, they didn’t know where to put us. We came to a gym hall. People were lying on straw. Then they sorted us out, and the wagons carried on. Some went to Württemberk, who was a factory worker. Who was a farmer, stayed in Bavaria. We stayed in Bavaria. And I was seven months pregnant at the time.”

“Then in 1946 suddenly everyone left, but a few of us German families still remained there. And they said: ‘All Germans out!’ So the last of us Germans left. We came to the camp in Jihlava. Then we were carted off in wagons. That was in Staré Hory, in an old factory there, where we stayed for a fortnight or a week or so. And suddenly they said: ‘Take what you’ve still got with you, you’re leaving today by train.’ So we left.”

“And there (Helenín near Jihlava, editor´s note) we were in the lager. And they said: ‚You all go away in the transport to Germany. You take, whatever you go and you can go...‘ From the transport and there was an army. So we passed through the door, where they sprayed us with some kind of DDT. They said: ‚Take only what you can carry in your hands, anything extra should be left at the gate and the car will bring it to the station.‘ They took us to the station, and when we got there, there were plenty of people, wagons from Brno came and so on. Well we never saw any of our luggage. The train, get in the carriages for cattle transportation. Get on, over twenty people or I don’t know how many, there were in the carriage and off we went. No luggage anywhere. No one cared to bring it anymore.”