This is our home, we‘re not going to Germany
Stáhnout obrázek
Helga Hošková, née Ritschlová, was born in Radoňovice near Liberec on 29 August 1939. Her parents were of German origin. Her father Karel Ritschl enlisted in the war as a paratrooper, her mother Marta Ritschl stayed at home and took care of the children. Towards the end of the war, the family lived in Poděbrady, where the father was being treated for his war injuries. After that he had to return to the front. She has not seen him since. The mother and her three children had to leave Poděbrady after the end of the war. They spent four months in Teplice at the family‘s garden centre, where they hid in a shelter made of mattings as Germans. In November 1945, the mother and her children moved to Šluknov, to the flat of her maternal grandfather. Helga Hošková was not allowed to enter the first grade immediately. They wanted to deport the family to Germany. However, the grandfather, Adolf Endler, was an expert in the factory and was therefore allowed to stay with the whole family. The witness eventually started school a year and a half later. After graduating from the municipal school, she started working as an accountant at TOPOS, where she later met her husband Jaroslav Hošek. She remembers the occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops and was worried about her children. Since the 1980s she has been interested in local history. She worked as a cultural officer and Pioneer group leader. Since 2000 she has helped to organize meetings of the inhabitants of the vanished village of Fukov and their descendants. At the time of recording (2025) she was living in Šluknov.
