"What was terrible for me was that when I went with my daughter, for example - because I was at maternity leave, she was a year and a half old, I had her in a pram. And it was terrible when I walked down the main street and there were armoured personnel carriers and those soldiers there with a rifle aimed at the sidewalk. And I with the kid in the stroller, it was terrible for me. "
"The kindergartentante we called her. She was the director. There was also a German kindergarten. And she came to threaten us. Always:, Heil! Heil! ‘Well, so mom never raised her hand, dad not yet, that's clear. And she kept cheering. And she went to threaten, she told my mother, 'If you don't go to the Germans and don't give Krista to a German school, I'll take care of it or we'll take care of it, that your husband will lose his job!' Well, that's why I went to German schools. "
"She somehow learned that her mother was German, so she just wanted to get her mother into their group. Which didn't happen, because no one convinced my mother. My mother said that unfortunately she had married a Czech and that she had Czech nationality. Well, but still… Now after the war, the Czechs looked at her again as a German. Even though she had Czech citizenship. "-" At your mother? "-" Yes, to my mother. And she had to go with N. She wasn't allowed to go out, she had to wear N. For two months. Then Dad somehow settled it and the order was somehow withdrawn and didn't have to, but Dad lost his job again because the mother was German. My parents were going through difficult times. "
"He could not return because he was in captivity. Well, if he came back, the Czechs would lock him up. Well, she was expelled with the sick grandmother, she was bedridden, and the little two-year-old daughter. I know that I loved Thea very strongly. Well, she was a baby. How old was I? Eleven. No, I was ten in 1946. Well, I had her, I remember it like it was today. I keep reminding her, too. I was sitting in a small chair in the hallway, with her on my lap, small Dorothea. Well, they carried Grandma down to the truck and drove to Muna. "-" To Mikulovice? "-" To Mikulovice. And I know, that Dad. Fortunately, we were like there in Vidnava when they were expelled. And Dad used to go to Muna every three days so that they have something to eat. ”
“I took music lessons at the monastery. The nuns there could speak languages, they were professors, musicians, and so on, and so forth. Except after 48 there came a ban, and they weren’t allowed to teach any more. Now I also... Mum knew them, we attended church, we had a strict Catholic upbringing. So I went there and I said I would like to learn French. Well, and the one nun said: ‘Well, you know, miss, I’m not allowed to, I’m not allowed to.’ And Mum talked her into it, so that okay, she’d take me. I said: ‘I really won’t tell anyone about it.’ That was about it 54, 55. So I persuaded her, scavenged around – there weren’t any books to be gotten, it was hard to find anything – and then I did get a French textbook. So I came to my first lesson. ‘Miss, I’m terribly sorry, but there was another inspection here from the district just yesterday. Saying it was strictly forbidden, that we mustn’t teach. We can’t afford to.’ So that was the last straw, and I thought: ‘Enough! I need to get out of Vidnava!’”
“‘Today we’re going on a work trip, we won’t be [learning - trans.] any more today... we’re going to collect paper.’ Well, and now the old buildings that were abandoned, there were German books, sheet music, and stuff inside them. Well, sheet music, you can hardly say that’s German sheet music, can you. But we took everything, we took it to the recycling plant. Those were so-called collection days, and us pupils had to take part.”
Kristýna Voráčová was born on 10 June 1936. Her mother was a German, so she experienced the post-war anti-German hostility very intensely. She still remembers the reluctance with which she participated in the children work teams that gathered books from abandoned German houses and took them to be recycled. She attended secondary school in Šumperk and found employment as a nurse in Vidnava in 1952. She wanted to continue her education while working, but when she was barred from learning French, she decided to move to Prague. After two years of searching she found an opening at Podolí Hospital. She also met her future husband in Prague, she married and gave birth to a daughter. In 1969 they all returned to the Jeseníky region, where the witness lives to this day.
