Edita Nyplová

“After two years in captivity, or maybe just a year, my father went from the USSR with this friend of his from Poland. They had to work there, they were unloading freight cars carrying salt. That was indeed an unpleasant job. They had no shoes, just those rags wrapped around their feet. Then they would take the Trans-Siberian Railway to Poland, where this friend of his had been living. There my father had been working till spring, he bought a pair of shoes with money he made and he walked all the way home via Náchod, yet he didn't find us there. So he went to Prague with another friend of his, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking them to let him go to Germany to reunite with his family. But they refused, stating there was a labour shortage and we were supposed to return to Czechoslovakia instead. So after five years, we had to abandon everything we worked for, and again, we went by truck with this Russian guy and a policeman, through Bad Schandau back to Bohemia. We had to wait at a railway station until my father came for us. It was a terrible night, as the railway station was full of Gypsies. And when we came home, there wasn't even a single curtain left. It was all gone.”

“They would take us to Bad Schandau, where they would order us to get out. Three was this church of sorts. We had to go uphill, they would rush us, shooting over our heads. My mother was exhausted, as she was pushing a pram with my brother. And my mother lost her mind, she left us standing there and wanted to drown herself in a pond. But there was this man who would catch her and he started shaking her, saying: 'You have your kids with you!' So we went on. It was just horrible. We reached the church, we had to wait outside till morning, we would sit under a chestnut tree. In the morning, we had to continue, to the railway station, into those freight trains again, and they would take us through Dresden. I saw the city completely bombed out. We went further on towards Erfurt. They would unload us and put us in those long barracks where soldiers used to be garrisoned. That's where we were, there was a stove and a single cup. So we got together, me and my brother, and we would go stealing vegetables, as it was a fertile land, and my brother was quite small and then I would get the stuff from him and we would run and make a whole pot of it, we would cook the vegetables and feed ourselves.”

“My grandfather and my grandmother... We were all Czech, just my mother was German. And in 1945, my mother said: 'Hopefully, we won't be evicted. But one never knows'. But local women were already discussing this possibility. So my mother would make this small bag and put some food in it, she did this in the evening as I remember. And I was good at drawing, so I would take those small coloured pencils. And at six o'clock in the morning, two men came to evict us from our house. Two men came into every house and they would evict everyone, you had to get out in just five minutes. And when one of them saw I had my bag ready, he said: 'Well, this just can't be! You won't need pencils anymore. To Siberia with you!' And he would take the bag and he would empty it. So I would gather my stuff and put it back inside. This happened in August, or maybe in September.”