Margita Antonová

* 1936

  • "My grandmother had friends in Malá Jizerka and I used to go there a lot with my grandmother. But I had to walk from Hejnice to Smědava and then on to that... She dried hay there because they had cattle. So she used to go there, I don't even know how she had met them, but we used to go there every year. And I had to go by foot, I got a backpack on my back. And I liked it there because they had this chest of drawers, and my grandmother slept on the bed, and the lady pulled the last drawer out of the chest. And that's where she made my bed. Jesus, I loved it so much! I used to go out there and collect pine cones in the woods, that's what they used for heating. That was a huge room, the kitchen, and they had rooms upstairs because that's where various people would come for the summer holidays. There was a big room downstairs, it was partitioned off like this, there was a huge tile stove, and here it was like a living room. I can recall it vividly, there was a corner bench in the corner, there was a big wooden table, and there when there were thunderstorms, and they used to be severe thunderstorms, there was always a candle on the table, and everybody was sitting around the table and praying, except for me."

  • "He came here - but I don't remember the name - that we were going to be deported. He gave my mother some paper, looked around and said he was going to take the cat, that was the last drop for me. And he was looking for something else. The cupboard, that he was going to take it. Just so we'd be ready. And we were already, my mother had this box made because she had been expecting it, 30 kilos we were allowed to take per person. I still have the boxes up in the attic. That next morning we were to come, I don't know now, I think down to the school, that we were going to be deported. My mother got angry, well, angry, she was just scared, she was alone with me and my grandmother, so she ran to Hejnice to the factory. She was working in the weaving factory and while weaving, it was such long rolls, there were certain mistakes, maybe there was a hole or a knot. These were such long needles and the needle had a ball at the end so she could pick it up. It was called embroidery room, they had to clean it [the woven material] all up. Then there was a lady, they had a huge table, and she would pull it across the table and mark with chalk where the mistake was. Then they rolled it up and took it away. None of the people who moved in knew how to do that, because southern Bohemia, it was mostly agriculture, there were no factories. And here, if they made with defects, they couldn't pass it on. And it wasn't just my mother, it was other things. People who were needed stayed here. She announced there that she wasn't coming back, that she had to go to the deportation, and they said, 'Don't worry, you're not going anywhere, we need you here.' They arranged it, and then he had to come give us back the food cards."

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    Bílý Potok, 11.03.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:33:54
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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Firstly, the Czechs who were looting came. Only then those who stayed in Bílý Potok

Margita Antonová in her youth
Margita Antonová in her youth
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Margita Antonová was born on 27 February 1936 in Hejnice into a German family. Her father, Franz Krause, came from the neighbouring Bílý Potok, where the witness grew up and lived her whole life. Her father committed suicide during World War II because he did not want to return to the German army after suffering an injury. After the war, the witness and her mother were supposed to move out of Bílý Potok, but they ended up staying. Her mother worked in a weaving mill in Hejnice and was one of the German specialists who avoided the expulsion. Being German, the witness could only start school in September 1946, and for the first six months she was not marked due to her lack of knowledge of the Czech language. She finished primary school at the age of 16 and then began to study at the secondary medical school in Liberec. Due to insufficient financial resources she had to leave it after half a year and start working. Until her marriage in 1957, she worked at the Kolora company in Liberec, and after her maternity leave, she joined the Bytex national enterprise in Bílý Potok - first she worked in the production of carpet yarn, and later in the shipping department until her retirement. She and her husband Karel Anton raised two daughters. She was living in Bílý Potok in March 2023.