Herbert Rösler

* 1930

  • Herbert: My name is Herbert Rösler, I was born on 25 March 1930 here in this house.” Annelise: “And we’re not leaving it.” Herbert: “I went to school in Dolní Polubné. When I finished school I learnt to be a cooper, we made barrels, it was easy, everything by hand. I was there five years. Then I also joined the glass works.”

  • Annelise: “They wanted to send our old granny away. My father said that if she went, we would go as well. I was twelve at the time, my sister was six.” Herbert: “Our granddads had a so-called Gottwaldschein. A card that said they worked in the glass works, that they could not be deported.” Annelise: “We had an armband, a white one, like that we’re Germans, and a P on it to show we were workers [pracující].”

  • Annelise: “We had a course. How are things? - Thank you, not too bad, one mustn’t complain. That’s how we learnt, but that’s all we knew. I knew one more phrase from my dad: Pretty girl - kissy. When I was fourteen, I still couldn’t speak Czech properly, I just couldn’t. They didn’t teach me it at home.” Herbert: “I served in the military without speaking any Czech. I still can’t speak it. My commander knew some German, he was Hungarian, one Bútora: ‘Rösler, if you didn’t have it well set up, I will shoot you.’ ”

  • “I did military service in Šumava in 1954 to 1956.” Annelise: “He cried as soon as he arrived, he didn’t know anything there.” - “That was the loveliest time of my life. We were all equal there, Gipsies, Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, Czechs. I was there with three friends of mine. It wasn’t the AUC [Auxiliary Engineering Corps, forced labour - transl.], no, it was normal service. Artillery.” Annelise: “He was an exemplary soldier. We’re bristling with medals.”

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    Polubný, Desná, 20.10.2013

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I was born here and I’d like to also die here

as private Roesler 1954-1956
as private Roesler 1954-1956
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Mr and Mrs Rösler live in the Jizerské Mountains in Polubné, which is now a district of the town of Desná. They live in a house that belonged to Herbert Rösler‘s parents, the same house in which he himself was born in 1930. He learnt to be a cooper. In 1951 he married Annelise Nippel (*1933) from the nearby village of Ničové domky. They were exempted from deportation, both because their fathers worked in the local glass works, but also because they sympathised with the Communist Leftist Workers‘ Sports Union (WSU). In the years 1954 to 1956 Herbert Rösler underwent military service at the artillery section, he then lived his whole life in Polubné. In the 1970s they applied for permission to emigrate to West Germany, but their request was denied. After 1989 they did not consider emigration any more.