Doris Remešová

* 1944

  • “My brother was born in 1945 while they were still in Mistrovice. We then lived there with our dad, who was still emaciated from the war. It took him a long time to recover. On the first photographs from the time when we came here, our grandma looks as if she arrived from a concentration camp. They kept a goat in the house, though, and they were able to make hay. But there was probably a shortage of food stamps for Germans, and our parents were perhaps giving more food to us, the children, so that we would survive, rather than eating themselves. Our family was evicted together with the grandmother. I have photos showing how they were loading our things on a truck. The picture was taken by my aunt’s husband, who still lives in Mistrovice. But he took the picture secretly, because it was not allowed. It was on July 27, 1947. They did not want us in Germany anymore. And my Dad could not get to Germany even after my mom had suffered a stroke and was left with half of her body paralyzed. We were four little children and dad needed help. At the beginning, Czech neighbours from a farm in Podzámčí were helping us. Then the Hartl family began taking care of our youngest sister. They were a German family, too, and dad had probably met them at the railway station in Opočno. Whenever we later visited my aunt in Mistrovice, we would always eat everything she had there; she still remembers it. She would bake four pans of cakes and we would eat them all. We were starving.”

  • “My father’s brother married well. He married a communist’s daughter. They had no problems with travelling. One of them brought a little wooden rabbit for my brother. I remember that it was a very nice toy, painted white with red spots and it had bakelite wheels. I was pulling the rabbit down the stairs and the wheels got broken. My dad then scolded me for breaking it – that’s the first thing I remember. And I got beaten once. That was when I got my first new shoes. I was wearing big warm shoes. I learnt Czech in the school in Opočno where I always walked up the hill from Podzámčí. I remember that one of the teachers was really nice. I didn’t have any problems with the other children. This teacher let me sit on her lap and she told the children: ´Children, this little girl will tell you how to say ´an egg.´ And I said ´Ei´ in German. But when my brother began going to school, he did have a problem; he was afraid and he was made to sit in the corner for punishment. And one time somebody called me a German rat and my brother got into a fight for me. We still have a very good relationship with my brother even now, but I think that he had suffered because of me more that he ought to have.”

  • “My brother was thought to have cancer and when he was in hospital and I went to see him, he had some time to talk to me. It was only then that he told me what he had learnt from our father. As they were at the Opočno railway station, sitting on the boxes with their property after they had been evicted, my dad and mom were contemplating suicide. All the people were gone and they were sitting there alone at the railway station. They didn’t know what to do. Two little children, emaciated grandma and expectant mother. They were looking at my little brother who was running around these wooden boxes and making faces at them. He would run around, come back and make a funny face. My father later told him: ´You have actually saved our lives.´”

  • “My father had shrapnel all over his body, even in his head. His genital area was affected the worst. He suffered injuries of his testicles and penis, the doctors had stitch him up and he has lost awfully lot of blood. But it was the Russians from a nearby house who gave him first aid. When Germans then came for him, he asked them to spare these Russians’ lives, because they had done everything in their power in order to save him. He was then taken to a field hospital where they sewed the wounds so well that even the doctors in Germany, where he was then recovering, praised the surgeons’ work.”

  • “My dad applied for emigration to Germany six times, but they never allowed him to leave. When he received the negative response for the sixth time, he asked the clerk who gave him the letter for the reason, and the lady said: ´We will not let such a good worker like you go to Germany.´”

  • “When we got off the train at the station in Opočno, local farmers came there to pick families who would work on their farms. But when the farmer who came for us – he was from Slavětín – saw what our family looked like… My mom was pregnant. We were evicted on 27th July, 1947. My sister was born in Opočno on 5th September. You can imagine how my mom looked. The farmer said: ´I will not feed so many hungry people.´ We were left at the railway station alone.”

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    Šediviny, 15.08.2013

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We were left at the railway station alone

Doris' first school day in 1950
Doris' first school day in 1950
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

  Doris Remešová, née Březovská, was born in 1944 in Mistrovice (Meistersdorf in German) near Česká Kamenice. Her parents were German nationals just like the vast majority of people from her native village. Although Doris was born at the very end of the war, the consequences of WWII have had impact on her entire life. The family was not included in the forced displacement of the German population from Czechoslovakia, but in summer 1947 they had to move to Opočno in the foothills of the Orlické Mountains, where they were supposed to work in agriculture. However, none of the farmers were interested in taking their large family, and the parents with children and grandmother were thus left alone at the railway station and allegedly contemplating suicide. It was actually their two-year-old son who has saved their lives, running chirpily around and wanting to play with his parents. Her father, who had been seriously wounded at Leningrad, eventually found a job as an electrician in the dairy in Opočno, and as a result the family was given a small attic apartment. After finishing school, Doris worked as a shop assistant, and while she was a manager of a shop in the small mountain hamlet Šediviny she met German Rudolf Remeš, whom she eventually married. She then lived with his family in their old timbered farmhouse from the 18th century. Her husband had fought in the wehrmacht during the war, and after sustaining an injury he returned home thanks to falsified documents. He fortunately avoided transport to Siberia after the war, but he was detained in Rychnov nad Kněžnou for some time. His mother was Czech, and his family thus did not have to leave Czechoslovakia, but all their property was confiscated. They received the property back for a brief period in the late 1950s, but then they had to include it in the unified agricultural cooperative in Šediviny, which was formed at that time. Doris Remešová continues to live in the old timbered house in the Šediviny hamlet, whose permanent population is only nine people.