Ewald Seifert

* 1937

  • "One night, it was already half past twelve, at the beginning or middle of December, there was knocking outside at our door. My mother, who was always fearless, she didn’t fear anything at all. She went out, opened the door, and there was an unknown man and said he needed a night's rest. That was my father. Ha was in France during war, got to American captivity in Normandy, up there where English and Americans were. He said the sky was black with loads of parachutes, so many came. He was at a PaK (anti-tank gun); out of fourteen men at the gun only three were left, the others were already dead. They took the three with them and sent them on a German freighter to America. And on their way they were still fired on by American or English airplanes, because it was a German freighter. There were six thousand men onboard. And then they had to work in American farms for eight months. Then they were driven over again on a ship, released in the Rhineland. My father did not know where they were. He knew that were were no longer in the old country land, but where we were, he did not know. We did not know whether he was still alive or where he was. Then in December he went to Steinach, which was a railway junction between Würzburg and Nuremberg or Treuchtlingen. Until then he was either driven or crossing the fields to Ohrnbach by night. It was a large place, he could not ask anyone where we lived, and yet he found us in the middle of the night."

  • “The day we had to leave, a soldier came by with a rifle in the morning. He knocked at the door with a rifle-butt, perhaps at half past six or seven o´clock, had a hand-written note, and there were many names listed. He read the names as good as he could read them in German. And when we were there, and in that case we were there, then we had an hour later to get to the Gasthaus Beitz, the biggest guest house opposite to the church. We had to gather there. Fortunately the builders, from the farmhouse number 40 where we were, they at least drove us with the carriage to the meeting place; otherwise we would had to carry all the boxes or pull them on the ground. So we were there in the morning, and I do not recall the date anymore, but it was sometime in mid-August 1946. I believe it was Thursday. In any case, we were there in the village square and the weather was nice, but it got hotter and hotter, and we were still standing there in the afternoon at four o'clock in the heat of the day. No one asked us whether we were hungry or thirsty. In any case, we were then driven to Niklasdorf with a 'wood gas car', with a truck. We were all sitting in the back and the Czech was in the front drove like an executioner under the trees and we almost crushed back there in the truck, as it almost turned over in the curves.”

  • “We were then in the Niklasdorf, in a camp, I do not know exactly how long for, I think around seven or eight days and that was the 'Muna' – an ammunition factory from Hitler's times. We were quartered in the barracks. The Muna was locked, so that no one could not get in the central area. In our outer area there was a railway track built and there was always a train with cattle wagons. In each wagon always 30 persons had to be placed, then the door was closed, the next in the other wagon, families were torn apart and the train always had 40 wagons of 30 persons each, plus guards with guns. Then we were carried away by two locomotives, because it went over the mountains, in direction to Prague. We stayed for three nights and three days traveling by the train, but were standing a few hours before Prague, in a boiling heat. We had no way to go to the toilet, as I said; there were no curtains or anything else. A little girl, which was also there, she was four years old and had a small tin bucket for playing in the sand, which all the thirty people used and everyone else watched. So there was really no privacy, neither for women, and there were mainly women and children, no men in there as they were at war.”

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    Jeseník, 09.08.2015

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It was good for us indeed

Ewald Seifert was born on 8th April, 1937 in Schwarzwasser (today Černá Voda) as the fourth out of six children. His father worked in Steinbruch and his mother led the household, when she didn‘t work in the farm. He attended school in Schwarzenwasser for about one and a half years, until after the war he could only speak Czech, which he, like most Germans, could not do. The exclusion continued through everyday bullying to wearing of white armbands with a black „N“ for „German“. In the middle of August 1946, the family had to pack up all their belongings within hours and then go to the „Muna“, the former ammunition factory in Niklasdorf. They travelled with many other Germans on a train in cattle truck; the journey lasted for two days and three nights from Prague to Bavaria. In September 1946 he and his family came to Ohrnbach near Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The reception by the Bavarian population fluctuates between undeniably rejecting the „refugees“; the Sudeten Germans always attach great importance to „home-displaced“ persons and solidarity in difficult times for all people. The family set up their new life in Ohrnbach; from December 1945 also with the father, who was found and rescued amongst American war prisoner. Seifert finished his apprenticeship, founded a family, built a house, and since 1980s onwards keeps visiting his „native country“ on regular basis.