Alfred Neudörfer

* 1947

  • “That year, we went on a school trip to East Germany – we went to Karl-Marx Stadt (Chemnitz), then Berlin, then Rügen, and it was holidays by the seaside. Since I’m bilingual, I interpreted during the excursions. They showed us machinery and production processes that were obviously different from the Czech ones. One day, we were sitting in a canteen. A man came to me, tapped my shoulder and spoke to me in German. It was in early August. He said: ‘You know, you should expect the Soviet army to invade Czechoslovakia.’ – ‘I beg your pardon?’ – ‘Yeah, Russian tanks with a white stripe painted in the middle are waiting all over the German borderland. Public life on the German side in the mountains Erzgebirge has ground to a halt, and trains have been suspended. Be prepared for something to happen.’ – ‘You’re crazy; they’re a brother nation…?’”

  • “We weren’t deported because the government knew of course that musical instruments were a good source of income in foreign currencies. They made sure that a part of the population stayed there; those people were not deported and had to stay here until 1962 and 1963. So, I would say, at least 50% of the local citizens in Luby spoke German well into the 1960s. Then, they were faced with a choice – to either accept the Czech citizenship, or else the authorities would scatter them all over Bohemia and disrupt the local community. It was simply blackmailing. Some people accepted Czech citizenship, some did not – and they were indeed scattered. For example, Guild Master Mr Trasný was made an assistant accountant at a farm in Teplá near Mariánské Lázně, and he was deported in 1955.”

  • “I remember one incident when my mum cried bitterly. She couldn’t speak Czech very well but she understood some. Mum had a distant relative, an aunt, in Oloví between Sokolov and Kraslice, and we would occasionally come for a visit. We took a train from Luby to Tršnice, then changed trains and went up to Oloví. I spoke to mum in German. At the time, trains were really basic, with wooden benches arranged in twos. I was speaking to mum while looking out the window. I was into the high voltage powerline masts, power stations, and surface mines that were visible from the train – I was enraptured. So, I was speaking to mum, and there were an elderly Czech couple sitting close by. They were looking at us, and you could tell something was welling up inside them. Then they got up, said: ‘German bitches!’, and left. It got to mum, and she burst into tears. That was the moment when I realised there were sine things that I couldn’t influence.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Mariánské Lázně, 21.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:45:28
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The master violin maker’s family was not deported, but being Germans, they were treated as second class citizens

Alfred Neudörfer in the Memory of Nation studio
Alfred Neudörfer in the Memory of Nation studio
zdroj: Paměť národa

Alfred Neudörfer was born in Luby (formerly Schönbach) near Cheb on 26 April 1947. His father’s family had been musical instrument makers for several generations. During the war and Nazi reign, the parents strived to save the witness’s disabled brother from euthanasia. They sent him to an institution for treatment, but he died there of hunger after the war. The Neudörfer family avoided the deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia – as musical instrument makers, they stayed in Luby along with several other families. Under official pressure, they were compelled to adopt Czechoslovak citizenship at a later date, though for several years, they only lived with restricted rights. The family faced discrimination on the part of authorities and other people due to their German origins. As a result, the witness nearly died of a serious disease – he had to go to hospital, but since Germans were banned from using trains, the trip became complicated. Following the Warsaw Pact armies’ invasion, the family decided to emigrate to Western Germany and settled in Hesse. The witness completed his studies in mechanical engineering at a university in Darmstadt, then raised a family. He worked in his field on an academic level, teaching at a university in Japan. He lived in Bensheim in 2023.