Ernst Schmidt

On September the 7th, 1945, we went underground for the first time. We had no working clothes, no clothes to change, nothing. The only clothes we had were the clothes we were wearing. We had to work in the shafts. I'm not exaggerating when I'm telling you that it was terrible. Especially for us youngsters. It was very tough to work underground in such conditions. The youngest lad was barely fourteen years old. We were very scared to work underneath the ground as we were totally inexperienced. At first, I was assigned to a group that worked in shaft construction. Later, I worked in a coal mine. The shafts were very narrow – the roof was only 30 cm high in the lowest point and 120 cm high in the highest point. At first, there was no connection with home whatsoever. It was only later when the first package arrived and contact was reestablished. The food and care we received in the labor camp were very dire in the beginning. We were handed a black coffee and a piece of bread in the morning and that was all we got all day long. The morning workshift began at six o'clock and lasted till noon. The second shift was from two to ten and the nightshift lasted till six in the morning. We worked eight days underground and eight days above ground. There was a lot of work that was more about bullying than really useful work. For instance, we had to move heavy iron girders some fifty meters to the left one day and the next day, we had to move them back to their original place. We had to unload logs that were used for construction purposes in the pits, or 50-kilogram sacks with cement. All of this in these terrible conditions in a heavily fortified and guarded camp. Once I got buried by a huge stone plate that broke away from the roof. I was squeezed between the plate and the floor and could hardly breathe. A certain Josef Špíl, a Czech guy, and two others saved me by lifting the plate and pulling me out. I was placed in a hospital in Ostrau because the doctor thought my rips were broken. After those three weeks, I went back to work.

“It was a very hot month and we didn’t have anything to drink. Czech civilians came to us and handed us a bucket with water. When we raised the bucket in order to drink from it they knocked it down. They tore down my father’s epaulettes and they slammed him with a whip on his head. In this case, the Czech population made a very uncomplimentary mark. But this was the only excess I experienced. Later, when I already got separated from my dad, we had to dig in ammunition on a field, yet.”

“We were taken to the district town Jägerndorf, or Krnov in Czech. We arrived in Jägerndorf late in the afternoon, it was already getting dark. The first thing I saw upon my arrival was a fence with barbed wire on it, approximately three meters high, and searchlights. In this way they unintentionally made me recall a Nazi propaganda movie that showed English internment camps where the Boers were being held during the Boer wars in South Africa. As we drove in through the main entrance gate I saw women with shaved heads standing in front of the wall of one of the barracks. We later found out that they were not allowed to lean on the wall with their back to take some rest. They had to stand in this position all night long. Why? I have no idea. We had to form three ranks with about three meters of distance in between the ranks. The guards went through the ranks and hit people randomly. They did it deliberately and for no obvious reason. During this ‘procedure’ I used to firmly clutch my amulet with Holy Mary on it. Nothing ever happened to me. I think this has something to do with faith and hope. But others got beaten up badly. Just because they didn’t understand Czech orders or for no reason altogether.”

“It’s hard to think about the past as you have to recall all the things that don’t exist anymore. For example the whole ambience of the town with its main square that was our home. That kind of square was very typical of the towns in the region. In the middle of it stood a fountain with a bronze statue holding a bowl in its hands. The well was used by firemen as a water reservoir in case of a fire in the town. I remember that we used to play games like hide and seek on the square. Most of all, however, I remember the beautiful nature around the city – the city park or the little river of Ossa. Today it looks so tiny, but when we were kids it seemed gigantic to us. Everything seems to be much farther away for a child. The distances seem so big. For example, the walk to the city spa seemed like a whole journey around the world to us although it was actually only half a kilometer away.”

“Why giving everything up and returning to a region that had become a tourist no man’s land. We’d only have to build up again what we had been building up for centuries and what we then lost. What the German expellee-organizations by-laws are saying, i.e. that ‘the homelands have to be recovered’ is crap. It’s just a bluff. The general German population doesn’t share this view. It’s over.”