Gertruda Samuelová

"At 3 a.m. on Wednesday to Thursday, my mother died. My mother had black raven hair and eyes as blue as the sky. When she died she was still warm. Her eyes were open and black. I got up to go to school, and I asked my aunt why my mother's eyes were so black? She told me that my mother had died. So I didn't go to school. My mother was on display in a coffin all day, that's how it used to be done. She wore a blue dress with a white collar and black stockings. She was lying in the coffin, she had a holy picture with her, she was holding a cross in her hands, and she had flowers around her. She was on display until four o'clock in the afternoon, and the neighbours came to bid her farewell. I wasn't crying, I felt numb. I used to go and watch my mother and then the black horses came with a glass wagon and they put the coffin in and took her away. It wasn't until I came back from the funeral that it hit me. I lay down on the ground, not crying, but screaming. I screamed like an animal! Suddenly I realized that my mother died."

"When my mother Hedvika died, it was difficult for me. I have not come to terms with it to this day. Malči was very mean, she beat me and called me names. I can't even tell you what names she used to call me. She called me a German and I wondered why. I was looking for some answers and I found a paper with my biological mother's name. It was also written there that I was seven days old when Hedvika took me in, and that she wanted to raise me a Czech woman. And that she didn't want me to know about my origins. But Malči was so mean and I found out about it. I started looking and found out my mother's name was Friedel Schöberl, and her birth date was in the papers too. It was about five years ago that I learned my father's name, he was a German soldier."