Gernot Schnabl

* 1937

  • "Then came the end of the war. Tachov was bombed. Suddenly, the Americans came on February 4, 1945, someone said the British, and we could hear the airplanes approaching. Always there were the sirens and then there were another two or three minutes before the planes got close. But there were sirens on that day, and a few seconds later the planes were there. We didn't have time enough to run to the shelter at grandpa´s, so we ran to our cellar. And as soon as we went down, there was rumble and blasts, the city was badly damaged by bombs. My mother was just making omelettes, she stood by the stove and the window was open because it was a nice sunny day. She dropped everything as it was and ran with us to the cellar. When she returned, right at the spot where she had stood, there was a shrapnel in the wall. If she had stayed upstairs, as some did, she wouldn't have survived, that´s a hundred per cent sure. She pried the still hot shrapnel out of the wall with a knife. To this day we have it as a relic at home, this witness to the war and the bombing of Tachov was expelled with us. Us boys went out to explore the bomb craters, it was very interesting for us. The water pipes were torn, the water was flowing out, we could see the cables. It was a very interesting situation for us. I also found out that the bomb hit the house of my friend who had lived just a few meters from us. Suddenly, the house wasn´t there, and the arm of my friend Walter Heidenreich was found in the field. The horror and the sight are still etched deep in my memory. "

  • "Every now and then a Czech came and took something from us. For example, one came with a horse-drawn cart and took away my mom's new furniture without having even said anything beforehand. Two men just came and loaded the furniture on the cart. But the mother used to say he was a decent man because in exchange, he brought us his old furniture, which was even taken up the stairs. My father had a motorbike. It was a 1200 cm3 Wanderer and it was standing in the attic. When my father went to war, he took off the chain and put it in a can of paraffin oil standing on the stairs. Two Czechs came and wanted to take away the motorbike. They turned up with a loaded gun and were already carrying it [the motorbike] down the stairs. When I heard they wanted to take it, I immediately grabbed a can with a chain and threw it on the street into the bomb crater where the adults used to throw waste. The men carried the motorcycle down and found out that they couldn't ride it anyway because the chain was missing. So they went again with a fully loaded pistol to my mother, where the chain was. My mother said that it was on the stairs, but there was nothing any more. Until my mother died, I never told her where the chain had got nor that it had been my doing. I could feel how terrified she was. Another time I was stopped on the street by three Czech boys, a bit older than me and they had a pistol again. I had to put my hands at the back of my head and they took my pocket knife from my pocket. We couldn't defend ourselves, those were really really bad times. "

  • "My mom baked bread from potatoes and sawdust, that's what we ate. I had always wanted to ski and one year, I got a pair of old skis from one of my aunts. She gave me some ski wax as well but my dad took it away and used it to make some candles for Christmas. We couldn't buy them. And they burned out in one minute. Dad also made stars for the Christmas tree. We kept the Christmas traditions of the old homeland. We baked the sweetbread and other things we knew from home. We also had hung apples and sweets on the tree. But in fact, we did not have any sweets or candy so we used the empty wrappers."

  • “Then we were told that we have to move away. We children couldn’t imagine it. My mom was a seamstress so she sewed us little backpacks which would fit our backs. Then we got information that the following day at 8 in the morning, we were to assemble in the street in front of the house with a piece of luggage of fifty kilos which we were allowed to take with us. Mom packed our things. I was sitting on the bed all night long, I was cutting the slides out from their little glass frames, it was a valuable memory of my father. Photographs of the town and the surroundings and of us, children. Mom wanted to take them with us at all costs but glass was too heavy, the slides were stored in such small wooden boxes. We put the film slides into an envelope which we hid in our luggage. We managed to bring them with us to our new homeland.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Rehau, 12.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:00:54
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the expelled Germans born in the Karlovy Vary region
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Was the expulsion good or bad for me?

Gernot Schnabl was born on July 5, 1937 in Tachov, his parents had also two younger daughters. He came from a very large family and his memories of early childhood reflect it. The atmosphere after the war is etched on his memory as the times of great fear and anxiety that the German population was constantly experiencing. In the summer of 1946, Gernot and his family were expelled to Bavaria, and the Schliersee in the mountains became their new home. In 1948, his father returned from British captivity and he was always very active in various compatriot matters. Gernot studied English and began his teaching career, specializing in special pedagogy and the education of difficult-to-educate children. After his father‘s death, he also became more involved in activities related to the old homeland. For him, Tachov still remains his home Nr.1. He has three children.