Ingrid Petříková

* 1940

  • „So the people went to Germany, where my brother was living in Essen. He said: ,I had mummy, Inka and Pavel and Jenda, and we all lived in Vratislavice, but now I have no one in the whole world as they all died.‘ They said: ,How did they died? Mrs. Stará is there, Inka and Pavel as well.‘ –, That´s not possible, I write them letters and they keep coming back saying they´re dead. So I stopped sending them.‘ So the people took an address and gave it to mummy, then we made contact and so did he. When I was sixteen we went to the station and met up after a long time. And ever since then we kept visiting each other.“

  • „Mum was quite a pretty lady, a temperamental one and next to us there was a widower, Jaroslav Starý. He already fancied mummy and was sorry that we ought to get displaced and he´d stay here. So he went to the committee to marry her, because he liked her. Hence we could stay here as he was Czech. So we did. He had a high position as a communist and so we could stay here.“

  • „My brother Erich and Jenda lived in Moravia at her granny, because mum as I said, she had seven foster mothers and when she was pregnant, they were not glad and they´d chase her away. Then she served in Prague and she came back as she had difficulties to feed us all. So she kept us two here and Erich and Jenda were well off living with our Moravian granny. I remember we traveled by train in 1945 and everyone was there. When we went another time granny and daddy nor the boys were there. We would ask around and people said they´d displaced them. Only later, when we found my brother, I was sixteen then, he said they had to march a long was and it was terrible and granny and grandpa died then.“

  • „I remember it all very well, when the Russians came. In Vratislavice we have a pharmacy, a church, the House of freedom. That´s a kind of a main street. When the Russians came I had a pink bag and they gave me some chocolate and some sweets. Brother was two years older and he jumped up their tank and went almost to Jablonec with them and marched back on foot. That´s how I remember the event. It was jolly, the tanks and Russians. Mummy then cooked and helped around. There were Poles and Russians here.“

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    Liberec, 27.11.2014

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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Brothers got lost during fierce displacement

IMG_3674.JPG (historic)
Ingrid Petříková
zdroj: dobová archiv pamětnice, současná A. Jelínková

Mrs. Ingrid Petříková, née Hübnerová, was born on April 11, 1940 in Liberec-Vratislavice to German parents as the youngest of four siblings. The father fell during war at the Eastern front. A single mother then sent due to financial reasons her two elder sons, Jan and Erich, to their grandparents in Moravia; Ingrid and her older brother Paul lived with their mother in Vratislavice. The family spoke German. In summer 1945 Ingrid and her brother were selected to German inhabitants´ displacement. A Czech neighbour offered to marry the witness´ mother and managed to get her and her two children a permission to stay in Vratislavice. Both elder brothers of the witness, Jan and Erich, as well as grandparents from Moravia were displaced in summer 1945 - grandparents died during the moving out and the brothers got to Germany, but lost contact with their mother and siblings. The mother attempted a desperate suicide. The family managed to contact Erich more than ten years after the war, but they never found the brother Jan despite much effort. After finishing school Ingrid worked in Bytex in Vratislavice and married later. She raised two children with her husband, an air force officer. Mrs. Ingrid Petříková is a widow and during her pension works in Liberec theatre F. X. Šalda. She still lives in Liberec-Vratislavice.