Ewald Seifert

“The day we had to leave, a soldier came by with a rifle in the morning. He knocked at the door with a rifle-butt, perhaps at half past six or seven o´clock, had a hand-written note, and there were many names listed. He read the names as good as he could read them in German. And when we were there, and in that case we were there, then we had an hour later to get to the Gasthaus Beitz, the biggest guest house opposite to the church. We had to gather there. Fortunately the builders, from the farmhouse number 40 where we were, they at least drove us with the carriage to the meeting place; otherwise we would had to carry all the boxes or pull them on the ground. So we were there in the morning, and I do not recall the date anymore, but it was sometime in mid-August 1946. I believe it was Thursday. In any case, we were there in the village square and the weather was nice, but it got hotter and hotter, and we were still standing there in the afternoon at four o'clock in the heat of the day. No one asked us whether we were hungry or thirsty. In any case, we were then driven to Niklasdorf with a 'wood gas car', with a truck. We were all sitting in the back and the Czech was in the front drove like an executioner under the trees and we almost crushed back there in the truck, as it almost turned over in the curves.”

“We were then in the Niklasdorf, in a camp, I do not know exactly how long for, I think around seven or eight days and that was the 'Muna' – an ammunition factory from Hitler's times. We were quartered in the barracks. The Muna was locked, so that no one could not get in the central area. In our outer area there was a railway track built and there was always a train with cattle wagons. In each wagon always 30 persons had to be placed, then the door was closed, the next in the other wagon, families were torn apart and the train always had 40 wagons of 30 persons each, plus guards with guns. Then we were carried away by two locomotives, because it went over the mountains, in direction to Prague. We stayed for three nights and three days traveling by the train, but were standing a few hours before Prague, in a boiling heat. We had no way to go to the toilet, as I said; there were no curtains or anything else. A little girl, which was also there, she was four years old and had a small tin bucket for playing in the sand, which all the thirty people used and everyone else watched. So there was really no privacy, neither for women, and there were mainly women and children, no men in there as they were at war.”