Rudolf Peller

* 1926

  • „In 1938, when the situation was heating up already, we tried to get away and got as far as the interior of Bohemia. But as you know, most people did not get away from there. Some were lucky and made it to Canada or Denmark. Some of them did make it to England. But we had to go back and the moment we came back, my dad was arrested. He was at first fired from the mining company where he worked and when he went to the local authority to inquire whether it was lawful, he didn’t come back anymore. They picked him up there right away and transferred him to the Elbogen Castle and then to Zwickau prison. From there, he went straight to the Dachau concentration camp.”

  • “After my dad had been arrested, the family income was gone as well. So my mother was left behind with four kids and had no income at all. Fortunately, the mayor of the place was a decent man and he granted my mom an income of 5 Deutschmark a week. He told her, that when the income is restored, we’d have to pay it back. It was a loan. Furthermore, there were some people living there, who had mercy with us. They’d give us food occasionally. This was actually very kind of them. One of them was an outspoken Nazi who once gave us a basket full of food. This was very surprising for us at that time. I mean I was twelve years old by then and so I didn’t understand too much of such things. You just realized that something was going the wrong way.”

  • “When I was in the military, I noticed that my file was following me everywhere I went. They really knew my family background and our political attitudes and sentiment. I can give you an example. When I served in the Arbeitslager (labor camp), they were looking for volunteers for the Waffen-SS. For a start, they waited to see who’d volunteer. But of course there weren’t many to volunteer for the SS. At that moment, I was trying to come up with something to tell them in case they approached me the offer to join. After just a handful of volunteers signed up, they started to make the rounds of the men. They would ask each man individually if he wanted to join and if not they wanted to know the reasons for the denial. And when that officer from the SS was talking to me, the chief of the labor camp took him aside and talked with him for a bit, whereupon he came back and said: ‘all right, you can go’. So it was clear to me that they knew about my and my family’s political attitudes. And it was the same everywhere I went. They knew about my background before I even arrived somewhere.”

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    Hof, 27.08.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 46:01
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Not to disappear from history
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You feel at home where you spent your youth. All other things are not that much important

Rudolf Peller as a joung man
Rudolf Peller as a joung man
zdroj: privat

Rudolf Peller was born on December 22, 1926, in Altsattl in the Egerland. He originates in a working-class family and his youth – preceding the year 1938 – was marked by political talks that were frequently held at home. He was also significantly influenced through his membership in the ATUS and the Jugendfreunde. His father worked in the mining industry and his mother took care of the household and four children. One of the children died early on while Rudolf’s father was imprisoned for some time in the Dachau concentration camp following October 1938. The family tried to leave the occupied territory but their escape attempt failed. Upon his release from prison, he had to take up the job of a roadman, before he could come back to his work in the stone pit. Rudolf Peller himself was drafted to the Arbeitsdienst at the age of 16. After he was released from captivity, he returned to his family in Altsattl. He then worked, just like his father, in the stone pit and later as a truck driver for a Czech company. Being a recognized anti-fascist family, they moved to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1948. They spent two years in the refugee camp. Rudolf met his wife, who was from a neighboring village called Elbogen, at this time. After being unemployed for one year, Rudolf found the job of an assistant worker at the Oberfränkische Volkszeitung. He married in 1952 and the newlyweds were able to move into their own flat. When the local association of the Seliger Community was established in Hof, Rudolf Peller quickly became its member, just like his father had before him. In 1977, Peller began to build his own house. Until his retirement, Peller also worked for a textile company and a publishing house.