Josef Schneider

“The church spire was high and you could see far from it, and everybody was on the lookout there. Especially when Meinl was to arrive for kiritof, for the feast; Meinl used to come every time. The first boys were awaiting him, watching from up there if he was already coming. When they saw him, they shouted down: ´He’s coming, he’s coming!´ The first boys then placed a large drum on the ground, and Meinl stopped by it, threw some money in there, and all the expenses for the feast were paid for.” “He was coming every year?” “Every year. He would ask at the stalls selling sweets how much everything cost, they would tell him some price, and he would pay it all. Children and women then had everything for free.”

“Then we had to move, at home they loaded all our stuff. Matěj Sič was also there, he was helping my father. They had two wagons, it was late, seven o’clock, it was dark. Father told Minka to pack the things they would need most, and then when the train stopped in Mikulov for a long time, waiting for a free track, they took what they could carry and ran away. All the other things got lost.”

“I attended a Czech school but when Hitler came, I had to go to a German one. I was to start the second class of higher elementary, and the teachers tested our knowledge of German. I was examined by the principal, his name was Krebs, and he told me: ´Look, son, you´ve got such a nice German name and you can’t speak German?”

“When we crossed the border, we wrote signs on the railroad cars: ´Mom, we’re coming home!´ We wrote signs like that. We were already on the Czechoslovak territory, it was late and dark, it was at night, and people were curious who we were and where we came from. Some found out that we were German soldiers, and they didn’t even want to give us water to drink. Before, they gave us everything, and now nothing. Well, we didn’t care. We spent the night somewhere and in the morning at seven we arrived to Prague.”

“Masaryk was our daddy, we used to call him daddy Masaryk. Then Beneš came, but nobody respected him anymore. But Masaryk meant a lot to us children. For us he was still daddy, even when we got older. Beneš meant nothing to us. Hitler then came shortly after, and it was over with Beneš, he had to escape. We had a rhyme about it: ´To London Beneš fled, to sit on Churchill’s lap.´”