Lining our fields and meadows we had these thick walls, about a metre and a half to two metres high. Our ancestors dug up stones when clearing land and piled them up to make walls. It looked a lot like in Scotland here. I really liked it. But when I came back, the walls were gone. Now they’re part of cottages, everywhere you can see cellars with those broken stones, you can take a look. At least the Czechs had some use for them. But I really miss them, we used to play on them. You could jump over them, bake cakes with raspberries or whatever we gathered on them. That was our childhood, that’s how we grew up. And those walls were part of it and I always miss them when I come to Javorná, because that simply changed everything. But I guess now the Czechs can be happy that they have stones for their cellars, that’s a good thing too.
My homeland, I don’t know how to define that. Everyone has a different idea about their homeland. But for me my homeland is – where my mother and father were, my parents and grandparents, we were a big family, that’s what my homeland was for me. But also the forest. I’m fascinated with the forest. You can’t get rid of that your whole life, that just sticks with you. If you’re born in the forest, you belong to the forest. That’s true for every German, every Czech who lives there, they would say the same, that’s my homeland. That’s just how it is.
No stone was left unturned. Everything was destroyed. You know what, I always told my husband: “I won’t last here very long, I can’t see a tree or a meadow or the woods, I can’t hear the birds singing.” Compared to Šumava it was a desert. Leipzig was completely destroyed, completely. My husband, his family had also been bombed, they lived at the university, everything had burnt, we had nothing. And so we had to rebuild it all piece by piece.
Each night the partisans came along. They had machine-guns, pistols, all kinds of things. When we heard them knock on the window and call “Open up!” we opened up and then it started. They checked inside the cupboards, took something and to me they always said: “Say, where your father. Or we shoot you.” Once I said: “Shoot!” I had no idea what they wanted me to answer. My mother was so afraid for me. It was a very, very difficult time. It was so hard on our nerves, it was unbearable. But you can’t blame the Czechs. They were after all the partisans.
Rosa Wohlfeld was born on 25 August 1927 as Rosa Denk in Onen Svět (Jenewelt) by Javorná (Seewiesen), near Železná Ruda in Šumava. She lived on a large farm in Onen Svět with her parents and her childhood was happy until the war started. She began attending school in 1933, completing eight classes in Javorná, followed by two years at the business school in Pilsen. Her mother died when she was an eight-year-old girl, her father later remarried. She survived the war alongside her stepmother, her father had to enlist. After the war, when resistance fighters brought havoc to the village, Rosa was unable to stand the constant pressure and blackmail and in May 1945 she spontaneously decided to flee from Železná Ruda through the woods to Bavaria. She arrived at her uncle’s house in Osterhofen, worked for him for a short while and then as a clerk in Griesbach. On 24 December 1946 she married in Leipzig and started a new life with her husband (a postal clerk) in the decimated town. In 1953 the family followed Rosa’s parents into the Federal Republic of Germany. They moved several times more, each time starting from nothing. They finally settled in Diesenbach near Regenstauf, where they live to this day. Rosa remained a housewife, raising three children. She returned to her homeland for the first time in 1989, surprised by the changes to the landscape. Rosa regularly meets with friends from her old home and wishes the topic of expulsion could once more be reopened. She thinks the politicians could’ve talked together and found a peaceful solution.
