Erwin Rupprecht

"In the fall of 1945, we were threshing corn in the field. The Czech police came and arrested my father. They put this big poster on our house saying 'National Administrator'. We weren't allowed in the mill after that. My father was gone, they arrested him, and the gendarmes told my mother that if she would bring them American cigarettes, they would let him go. It wasn't easy. But what the women had to go through back then is beyond belief. At night, my mother went to Hammermühle, where this friend of ours was, and he managed to get the cigarettes. Flour was the universal currency back then. So we got these three or four packs that we gave to the police. But we didn't know whether they would let my father go or not. As kids we were often afraid, we were afraid a lot.”

"Life at the mill was interesting. A lot of people came to us, even as a young boy I was in contact with them. In those days the mill actually served as this kind of a second pub of sorts. I can still recall that during the war we listened to the Swiss radio Beromünster. I had to stand guard because it was forbidden. That's how we got the latest information. People would come to our place and listen with us. But I had to keep watch, and if someone came, I had to let them in and also give them the signal to turn off the radio."

"The Hitler Youth meetings were every week, on Saturdays or Sundays, or when there was a holiday. For example, Mother's Day. At that time I had to go from Fischern to Pomezí nad Ohří, which was six kilometers, where we would gather and then we went on to Cheb, another six kilometres. In Cheb they mustered us in the square and then we had to march through the streets. There were children from all over the district. When a child was born in a house, the girls hung a wreath outside the window. And where there was a wreath, you had to stop and sing. Then I had to walk all the way back to Pomezí, it was already dark, and then another six kilometers on foot to Fischern, on my own. After this, my father didn't want me to be in the Hitler Youth. But we couldn't say it openly, as we would raise suspicion immediately. So I had to say that I was afraid. After that, I didn't go anymore. They took away my HJ card and also my food stamps. They weren't that important to us, as we had a mill, but we had lost our sugar rations. As that was for the whole family."