Marie Kramárová

“But the front´s crossing was terrible. They burst into the castle, I mean also the civilians with the soldiers, and we don´t know much more about that. We were hidden in one basement shelter. They just threw everything out of the windows, furniture, clothes, bed linens, simply everything was heaped outside.”

“When Wolfgang was captured, Mrs. Mannerová stayed in the back room used for ironing. She got there one bed, one small table and there she lay. And she never came out of that room anymore. From the front´s crossing, when seeing the mess outside of the window, she was left nothing. No money, no food, nothing…”

“Wolfgang was very stubborn, my dad tried to convince him: ʻGo together, you are both in your fifties, you can surely solve all of this in peace.ʼ However, Wolfgang didn´t want. ʻNo, I am a citizen of Bohdalice, I was born here and I am a Czechoslovak. I am not going anywhere, I have never hurt anyone and thus nothing can happen to me. I will continue to take care of it here.ʼ I don´t know when exactly they captured him, but everybody who spoke German was taken to a prison camp for German soldiers and officers. So he was kept there in Vyškov and he died on January 24. There were some witnesses who remembered he suffered a lot, and in the end, he was found in January, wearing just his underwear, lying in the brook with pneumonia.”

“One SNB member came and said: ʻHe was a German who doesn´t deserve to have a funeral, thus it has been cancelled and you shall depart!ʼ This was in January and so my dad took his bike and was full of fear hurried to Mr. Měřinský, hoping he wouldn´t have problems, as all of this was organized in secret. Then they prepared a grave near the place of those German soldiers and buried him at night. They only placed him there and buried, without any ceremony. There were just these two men and Wolfgang´s wife present.”