Jiří Rak

* 1944

  • “One day at the beginning of the 1970s, when I was settling down into the family life, I started digging through some old papers. And I found my adoption and foster agreements, the decision on my citizenship, notary letters. My name there was Jürgen Dieter Niedner, Jiří Chebský, Jiří Rak. I had copies made of all of these documents and went to the Czechoslovak Red Cross and told them I was searching for my birth parents. I told them that my father was probably missing, but that my mother was supposed to have been living in Germany. I assumed that they would find her. And so I wouldn’t have to have a translator during the meeting, I bought a language course and a year and a half later I had beaten it into my head. When they found her three years later, I spoke with her in German. I had learned it. We met in 1973. Mom saw me for the first time in thirty years.”

  • “In 1953 or 1952, when why birth mother was searching for me, the Red Cross from Czechoslovakia visited us. I was nine then. They asked me how I was doing, and told me that I had an aunt in Germany and wouldn’t I like to go live with her in there. Of course I said no. Then I had no way of knowing that it was my real mother. And, really, a nine year old child saying he’s going to just up and go to Germany? I didn’t know a word of German. My birth mother was a German but she hadn’t taught me a single word of German. So I told them no, and they then justified it by saying that the child didn’t want to go. But they let me know that I had an aunt.”

  • “At that time Háje had only about a hundred or a hundred and fifty buildings. It was a small district next to Cheb. They either talked about it at home, or had overheard it somewhere else, that little Jirka was adopted. Some of them later, of course in the middle of arguments, told me. So I ran home and Mom confirmed it. I didn’t even make a fuss, I wasn’t able to even imagine it. Mom told me that I was originally a German and that on paper my name is Niedner. And she also said that it was from the German word for niemand, meaning nobody.”

  • “If I had found out that I was adopted and that I lived in the care of strangers as a grown man it would have been different. But I was thirteen. Well, you know how kids in the village tease each other and everyone knows everything about everyone, they told me straight to my face: ‘You’re not even a Rak. They adopted you.’ Before I was always wondering why they were always making fun of me by calling German.”

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    Karlovy Vary, 01.10.2020

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I was a lost child of war. The Czechoslovak authorities made a Czech from a German and robbed me of my identity

Jiří Rak, 1965
Jiří Rak, 1965
zdroj: archiv Jiřího Rak

Jiří Rak was born as Jürgen Dieter Niedner on 6 October 1944 in Königsdoff in the Polish Upper Silesia, then part of the German Third Reich. His parents were Germans. They worked in a factory in occupied Poland. His unmarried mother temporarily handed her son over to a nursery near Opole, but the arrival of the front did not allow her to get him back. In spring 1945 the six-month old Jürgen was taken to Cheb in a transport of German refugees. His mother searched for him via the German Red Cross, but was unsuccessful in finding him. In 1948 he was adopted by the Rak family and received Czech citizenship and the name Jiří Rak. He trained as a machine assembler. He worked as a telephone repairman. He met his birth mother when he was already thirty years old. After the fall of the communist regime he got involved in the betterment of Czech-German relations. He collaborated with compatriot organizations in Germany. He was engaged in the history and mapping of historical sights of interest in the Cheb region.