“We lived all the way at the top, at the end, Aschberg it was called, right on the border. There was a path leading up. I can still see that white border stone as if it was today. Day trippers would pass by, and sometimes they would shout at us: ‘You’re Czechs and you speak German. Shame on you.’ No one knew any Czech here. Only the young ones, when they did military service, they picked up the odd word, but to actually speak it? No one spoke Czech. The border didn’t mean anything to us - we passed freely to and fro. We used to go shopping in Germany. We bought herrings there. Because the Germans have access to the sea, fish were cheap there. We had potatoes and fish three to four times a week during the winter. Peanuts and those kinds of things, we bought that in Germany. It wasn’t smuggling, it was normal. If you didn’t buy large amount, the customs blokes didn’t mind. People took whichever path suited them. The customs house was a bit further on, I guess they had some kind of boom gate there, I don’t know. We would go this way, where there was a path. Germans would come to Bohemia for butter and sausages. They didn’t have those in Germany at the time, because Göring had declared that butter would make them fat. In short, we used to go visit in Germany, we had friends there, and then they’d come to us. The border didn’t mean anything to us back then.”
“Bublava did empty out, but then the Czech came, and they took over the houses, so it wasn’t quite deserted. People also came from Pilsen to tear down the wooden houses. They took the material away to build their own houses. We were also living in one of those wooden houses at the time, and we had to move out because they demolished it. [Q: Did you speak Czech or German together?] Both Czech and German, I guess, but more Czech afterwards. I learnt it. When a German person came, we spoke German, when a Czech came, we had to speak Czech. Or try to speak Czech. [Q: Did a lot of the old-timers stay in Bublava?] No, not many, because one part left in the expulsion, the anti-Fascists went to East Germany - there were a lot of those - so not many Germans remained, only the really old ones. The older people couldn’t even communicate much, because they couldn’t speak Czech. They lured the anti-Fascists into East Germany with the promise of some kind of work I guess, I’m not exactly sure. My uncle also left with his whole family. Only one of his daughters stayed because she was married to a Czech. Many of our relatives lived in East Germany after that. You didn’t let it get to you, somehow, you took it as a matter of course. They’re leaving, they’re gone. That’s how it is. You’re here one day, there the next.”
Jindřiška Sporková, née Henrietta Sattlerová, was born on 14 April 1925 into the family of carpenter Josef Sattler and his wife Marie Sattlerová, née Seidlová, in the border-region village of Bublava near Mount Kamenáč (German: Aschberg), Sokolov District. Jindřiška grew up in the company of her many relatives, whom she lost during the war and especially its aftermath. She spent World War II caring for her widowed father and doing forced labour at the Kraslice aircraft-parts factory. She met her future Czech husband Václav Spork there. She avoided being expelled from Czechoslovakia. She stayed in Bublava with Václav; they had a daughter Vlasta in 1947 and married a year later. In the early 1950s they moved to Kraslice, where they both found employment at a factory that produced electrical equipment. They cared for their granddaughter Jana. In 2005 the widowed witness moved to Rotava into the care of her granddaughter Jana. Jindřiška Sporková died on August 14th, 2016.
