“The whole night dogs were barking, cats were meowing, cows were bellowing, nobody was milking them. So one day they came and herded them all into a pen and then they stood there until they found a place for them. They hadn’t thought it through, what they were going to do with those animals. My sister was four years older than me and she was so traumatised that till this day she cannot go to that village of ours at all. She still sees it in front of her eyes and she still feels sorrow after all these years.”
“And so we were alone there. Once I was playing outside and soldiers walked by. They had these long knives (bayonets – ed. note) on their rifles and light-coloured uniforms. They came to us. Before I made it home to find out what was happening, I was near the house, I thought that I would get a chocolate from them or something like that. Well, and in the meantime they cut everything open, they were standing on chairs, opening the cupboards, taking everything out and putting all of that in front of our house. I wanted my mother, I called for her, but she was not to be found in any of the rooms. The door to the attic was open and my mum was there standing in the corner, one soldier was kneeling in front of her and aiming at her with a rifle, another one had a watch in his hand and he was counting. As in, he was going to shoot her… They wanted to know where my brother was.”
“One beautiful day I was playing with the neighbour’s kids, I was about five years old, and suddenly I saw our neighbours walk by all dressed up. They walked in four rows towards the crossroad that was about one and a half kilometres away. I didn’t know what was happening so I followed them, being all curious. Just the way I am. So I stood by and those people were getting in trucks. So I asked my mum at home where were all those neighbours going. They told me at home that they were being taken to Jáchymov and that they would not be coming back.”
Erika Brinkmannová was born on the 9th of April 1940 in Sejfy (today’s Rýžovna). She has an older brother and sister. Her parents owned a hotel in Sejfy since 1932, which is also where they all lived. The family was excepted from the expulsion of Germans in 1946 and her father worked in uranium mines. The family was without a provider. Erika learnt Czech very fast during her first grade and from the 6th grade she was studying at a music school in Bečov nad Teplou. After her studies she worked as a shop assistant in Horní Blatná. She graduated form a business high school and moved to Ostrov nad Ohří where she also married. During the August occupation her mother moved to West Germany. While visiting her she decided that she would not be coming back and that she would stay in Germany permanently. Erika’s husband and brother did not manage to escape through Yugoslavia. Her husband then could not leave ČSSR at all and they divorced seven years later. Mrs Brinkmannová was sentenced to 18 months in prison for having left the republic. In the 1990s she lived in Karlovy Vary for a short while. Then she spent some time living in Germany again and in 2008 she permanently settled back in Karlovy Vary.
