Anna Macečková

"Were you afraid of being deported?" - "It was said that if Hitler had won, over a hundred families had been selected to be deported to Siberia. We were to be among them. Had Hitler won the war. But it didn't happen and he lost the war." - "And after the war? You were Germans, and the Germans in the Hlučín region were threatened with deportation. It happened in some villages." - "Yes. They took about five or six families from here. They were quite ordinary people who didn't hurt anybody, no Henlein people or whatever. They were just regular citizens. I don't know who ordered them out. Our neighbour, a woman named Berta Bilan, had five young children. Her husband's name was Theodor. They were deported too. I remember a trucking business owner; she delivered coal by truck after the war. She drove them away. I don't know whether to Hlučín or Opava, but I can still see them sitting on the truck bed, waving goodbye and crying."

"Do you remember which neighbours didn't come back?" - "Like from the war?" - "Yes." - "Next door neighbour Baránek's Arnošt, or Ernst, as we say, never came back. I think two of Korpás' boys didn't come back; they lived in our street. In total, 170 dead soldiers from our village who were in the German army. They all had to go. It wasn't voluntary. They got a draft card, had to join, and if they didn't go they were killed." - "Do you remember those guys leaving? How did they say goodbye?" - "They said goodbye crying. When my brother Emil was leaving after a leave, he cried. - 'Mum, I don't think I'm coming back. Oh, no, don't worry. I'll be back. If they shoot at me, I'll hide my head and let them shoot my butt.'"

"They said the Russians raped girls. We got dressed in clothes my mother used to wear. It's called a katsamayka and it's worn instead of a sweater... We put scarves on our heads and smeared our faces with jam which we sprinkled with flour to make it look like we had sores, like we were sick. We went to our neighbours' place, stayed there overnight, and two Russians came. Should I say Soviets? Or soldiers? They were Russians... How should I put it? They say 'Russians' on TV, so I'll say Russians. They came to the cellar looking for 'German'. Like Germans. We said there weren't any. We had the scarves, faces smeared and dirty. They kicked us all out but they kept two women with them."