Anděla Válková

* 1935

  • "The first ones who were deported left with bags and rucksacks. The Americans then boasted that the Germans didn't have anything either. That they were taking even the most ordinary cheap washtubs and baskets with them. That there was a war in Germany, too. There was nothing there either. So then the last ones who left, the uncle was among the last ones, so then they... My mother would always send me: 'Go and see where the people are waiting.' By the village, there was a crowd of boarding people, a certain quota of people who could fit into the wagons, or I don't know, a certain crowd of people. The last ones I saw, they had baskets and washtubs and all that kind of household necessities."

  • "The Russians were in our room–as I already said–where we were sleeping. They were doing whatever they wanted there. They had an officer there and he was always playing with his pistol and looking for Germans. They wanted to capture our Hubert. And my mother said: 'Go intercede, go beg them not to take him.' So I got out of bed, in my nightdress, as a child, and I begged them not to take Hubert. And Hubert spoke in Russian or something, and he kept pointing the revolver at me, saying that he would shoot me if they didn't take Hubert."

  • "When the war was over, they kept shooting all through the night. War kaputt! They fired all the cartridges they had. We were scared, terrified. What will happen? Will the front come back? We didn't know anything. Not until the morning: War kaputt! Then the shooting stopped, but that night was terrible. What will happen, what will happen to us... Fear and dread. All the time. The front was already approaching fom Hodonín, you could hear the shots, the guns. So from Hodonín, what you could hear, fear, fear, fear."

  • "Then, after they left, they stripped all the beds into bedticks because nobody believed you could lie in it after all those Russians. Whether there was some disease or something. Everything that could be taken away was burned. After that, we slept in bedticks, but still, we were glad to have a place to sleep. Because some houses were burnt down too. The barn, I know that one of them was burned down. When they burned the barn down, they were chasing the girls. They got lost in that barn and threw a mine or something in there, and the barn burned down, and the Russians thought the girls burned down there as well. But the barn had two gates! When they entered through one, they came out through the other and escaped. So then they were disappointed. That's all I know."

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If they knew what was coming, they would have chosen deportation

Anděla Válková
Anděla Válková
zdroj: Witness archive

Anděla Válková was born Angela Fiala on 10 February 1935 in Brno to German parents. Her father was a master locksmith and had a workshop with several employees in the centre of Brno. During the war, one misfortune after another began to haunt the family. First came the divorce of her parents, as a result of which, her mother had to take over the management of the workshop. Her two eldest sons were of great support, but soon they had to enlist in the German army. The older one was wounded and returned home. The younger one died during the battle of Kursk. Her mother became ill, and her condition slowly grew worse. At the war‘s end, the workshop was destroyed during the bombardment of Brno, but the family managed to escape to their grandparents in the countryside in time. Here, in the South Moravian village of Popice, she experienced the arrival of the Red Army and the subsequent deportation of almost all of their German neighbours. After many interventions, the family managed to avoid deportation and maintain their home and property. Not for long. Soon they were evicted from their home, their fields were confiscated, Mom died prematurely, and Dad was taken to the Soviet Union as part of reparations. Since then, the family has had no trace of him. Anděla Válkova was ten years old when the war ended. In the post-war years, which were strongly characterised by anti-German sentiment, she tried to fit in with her fellow Czech citizens. She learned Czech, changed her first name to Anděla, and soon married a Czech, František Válka, and moved away from Popice, where her German origins would not be known. She worked all her life in a factory and the JZD [Unified Agricultural Cooperative - transl.], built a house with her husband and gave birth to and raised three children. In 2023, she lived in Velké Němčice in South Moravia.