Elisabeth Panic

"It’s too late. There are too few true-born Silesians. It’s what I think, such a minority has no voice. Well, let’s say, history, language, traditions should stay, but not politics. I will tell you about Ms Poch who came from Aachen, near the French-Belgian-German border. She was from there. I remember when my mom here, and when the elder women came here and spoke Silesian. So my mom asked her if that was fine to her, when she spoke Polish. My mom was speaking Polish what meant Silesian. The woman asked: “How come?”. And my mom was speaking German well and her parents too. My mom would not have understood her father because his language was full of native influences. There were French, and Belgian, and Dutch. They were going for shopping to the Netherlands, he was going. Indeed, now we have our children in Germany and one daughter lives in Moenchengladbach, close to a Dutch border. Once my husband told the story how he was visiting her and waiting for a bus. He told about two elderly men sitting on a bench and that he couldn’t understand a word. Every 10th word was German. It must have been this Dutch and French influence. And so Ms Poch said: “So this is it. Here is the borderland. You have a right to tell such way, because we are saying such way too; we also have our influences. It is always like that on a borderland.” My mother appreciated her a lot for that. I think that people still should respect that. Yes, I think that we should be taught native language well, be taught German, be taught Polish".

"I remember Miller family, he was German. He experienced war in Germany and came back here. Later, the county had to give a permission to come here. As a German he didn’t get it, they didn’t need Germans. So this woman stayed alone with her children. He got married again in Germany, set the family, could nothing else to do. This woman worked really hard in ironworks, it was really hard job and she had 4 children. She had to raise the children up alone. There were lots of such women. Here 90 people died which is more than 9%, almost 10% people who died during the war, it is lots of. They were the men at their prime age, they set the families. They were really hard times for the women".

"That was a very bad day then and it happened already in April. One have barged into the house, totally drunk, the old officer and a 17-18 years old boy with him. He was mad about the clocks and the rings - that was all he wanted. What could be there in April? All that we had was stolen earlier. If we wanted to save our lives, we should give everything, right? He approached my 17years old sister, and here on the corridor, said: ”Give me the clocks, you small German!”, I still remember those words. As she didn’t have them, he hit her in a face but he noticed that she had nothing. So he kept running around. The house looks different now, but here, where the bathroom is there was a kitchen and a tenant’s room and here was a bedroom too. He went to the room where the owner had his 2 pairs of shoes. One pair of everyday shoes and the other pair of officer’s boot, very elegant. He had them hung there. When the soldier saw those boots, took them and calmed down. He came back to us, gave the boots to the younger and told us to marshal. As if he would like to shoot us. But then he just went away. He said not to move but we looked through the window and saw him getting into a car. The small guy handed him the boots and we saw him happy of having them. Fortunately, the boots save our lives as he was so drunk that could do anything. That was the worst memory that I remember directly".