František Stanzel

* 1931

  • The Urlich settlement, where Mr. Stanzel spent his childhood and youth – the part of the settlement that formed part of Nové Seninky (Spieglitz)

  • “They were in Seninka and we didn’t see that much of them. Nobody had any interest to go there and take a look at them. But they saw from the upper end of Seninka that there is a village here so a commando came to Urlich. By the time they came here, the women had already fled to the woods. Everybody knew what the Russians were like. We stayed at home, me, my two brothers and my dad. My sisters had left together with my mom. Five Russian soldiers came to our house – four were on foot and one was on horseback. They stayed at our house and looted the other houses. They stockpiled the stolen items at our home – a gramophone, some food, various stuff. My mom and sisters were hidden in the forest in the meantime. We built them a shelter there where they were protected from them.”

  • “It’s called the ‘Polish cabin’. Here, near the forester’s chalet, shortly before you arrive at the Kladská brána. The Poles were living there in a wooden cottage. I don’t know whether they were prisoners of war. They might have been also workers from Poland who were assigned to work in the forest. But they weren’t really guarded. They worked in the forest. I remember that they would help us to dig out the potatoes. After they finished with their work in the forest, they came to Urlich and helped us with the potatoes and in return, my dad would give them some potatoes for them to have some extra food.”

  • “We were the ones who were chosen from Seninka. The fourteen to sixteen year old boys had to go to work to a labor camp and we were supposed to go as well – me and my older brother Josef. But my dad didn’t want us to leave so he went to see the forester, Jánský was his name. My sister worked for him as an assistant worker and Jánský took us to the forest and thus we were saved. Because there were no other forest workers available, he could arrange for us to stay in the village and work in the forest. At the same time, we worked our lands. But when the harvest season was on, we could harvest our crops and didn’t have to go to the forest. After 1948, a lot of the re-settlers came to the region and so there was enough manpower for the forest. They came from Slovakia or Romania and were promised land and livestock. That’s how we lost our livestock and they also moved us to the inland to work on in agriculture.”

  • “After World War I, they smuggled goods of all kinds across the frontier. For instance sugar was cheaper there than here and conversely they took other items over there. I didn’t witness it so much myself any more but my dad would tell us great stories and he supposedly smuggled as well. There was a border guard but the locals knew their ways how and where to safely cross the border.”

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In the German settlement Urlich under the Kladsko saddle

young František Stanzel
young František Stanzel
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

František Stanzel was born in 1931 in the Urlich settlement to parents of German nationality. This small mountain settlement is located nearby Nová Seninka (Spieglitz in German) in the vicinity of Kralický Sněžník. František Stanzel spent almost his entire childhood and youth here. At the end of the war, many fugitives from nearby Kladsko trespassed through the settlement and its environs. After the expulsion of the German inhabitants, the village became almost depopulated. The Stanzel family wasn‘t banished from the village because they were indispensable as they worked in the forest. However, in 1948, they were moved to Haná, where they had to work for the local landlords. They came back to Urlich, which had been looted in the meantime, two years later. Until the middle of the 1960s, they and the Zatloukalovy family were the only inhabitants of the village. In 1961, František Stanzel married and moved to the nearby village of Nová Seninka, where he lives until today. A few weeks later, his parents left as well and the last one to leave the village was Alois Zapletal, a Czech. After his departure, the village remained unpopulated except for a few weekend settlers who have their cottages in the village.