Monika Simchen

"When I was a little girl, I was probably not even in school, we went to the Heinberg hill to see... Actually, we were not allowed to go there because the border was guarded. If we had been caught, I don't know what would have happened. Anyway, my parents found out that my mother's parents' house in the lower village was being demolished. Then people who had come from far away, from inland Bohemia or Moravia, were resettled here in Jiříkov, in the Czech borderland. It was a large house, built of stone in the front and, I still vaguely remember, half-timbered in the back. The half-timbered part was demolished, they just burnt it down. The whole family was there, and we were standing up there looking down, and the adults were all crying. Then I guess people took apart the stones that were left, and then later when we went by, there was still a very large blue spruce tree standing in front of the house for a long time, and the cornerstone from the stairs. It was a big stone, and it disappeared at some point too. It was there for a long time. I always knew that's where the house stood."

"I only know about it from my parents' account. The war ended in '45 and people were actually living in their houses quite normally. My father came back from the front in the autumn of 1945 and stayed home. Then, I think it was connected with the Beneš decrees, the Germans were driven out of their homes. My father always told me that he stayed with a friend for about six months in the lower part of the village where all those who had to leave their homes gathered. There must have been at least twenty or twenty-five people living there before the order came that the Germans were to be moved directly to Germany. Then the trains came. They didn't even know where the trains were going, they were told to meet at the station in an hour or two. They were allowed to take eight kilos with them. Eight kilos is not much. I tried it on the scale once, it's not much. And then they left, somewhere abroad."