Sonja Hefele

In former Czechoslovakia, it was extremely dangerous for Germans to become politically engaged. That’s why my parents focused on the material side of their existence, on the hardships, instead of intermingling in politics. They just struggled to make a living and survive. My dad, he was sort of a rebel who had a big mouth sometimes. He wasn’t all that much cautious in what he was saying at times. So – unfortunately I have to say – I would often see him come home battered and beaten up. A beaten-up grown man. And it wasn’t just a bloody nose. He was beaten up good sometimes.

“So they wanted to flee across the border to Austria and they actually already made it there with the help of a guide. They already set their feet on Austrian soil. The reason for their escape attempt wasn’t material misery – they weren’t living so miserable in Czechoslovakia. It was rather because of the way they treated my dad there. Because he was a German and back at the time, the Germans were widely unpopular. They were bitterly detested and despised. I have to go farther back in time for you to understand this. My dad was a member of the German Navy. His job was to clear the subsea mines. In 1945, he got into U.S. captivity and since he was a German from the Sudetenland – the borderlands – he was handed over to the Czechoslovak authorities. Upon his arrival in Czechoslovakia, he was immediately put into prison in Ellenbogen (Loket). They held him locked up there for a while and he was frequently beaten and mistreated. After he had been released, the police and the authorities kept an eye on him and he was permanently under oversight. He had to report to the police on a daily basis and he couldn’t leave a certain restricted area. They would have liked to put him back in jail but the prisons were totally overcrowded back then so that’s why they had to let him go. I mean, there was no trial. They pressed no charges against him. Well, there were no judicial or legal grounds for it anyway as he hadn’t committed any crime. His only guilt was his German origin and his former affiliation to the German army as a young man. But he never knew when they’d call on him again. There was no end to these persecutions in sight. And this was the reason for the escape attempt. They already stood with their feet on Austrian soil but my mother panicked because of her parents whom she had left behind. She was afraid for their safety as she feared that they would be persecuted for their flight. That’s why they walked back again. And that was a major mistake.”

"I was very lucky because I had the privilege to meet a great number of people from whom I could learn. Let me just give you two examples. One of them was this German teacher who taught me German. She was a Jew and she told me: 'you know, I can't really hate the Germans for although they eradicated my whole family, one German saved my life'. One of my colleagues who works for the German-Czech Society, said that he can't hate the Czechs because although they beat his mother to death during the expulsion of the Germans and his little sister died too, still one Czech family would hide him at their place and thus they saved his life. So you see where I'm heading. Everywhere where there's evil in the world, there's also good. I think that my generation has the duty to mend what the generation of my parents ravaged. We have to find ways how to overcome what had been done. The generation of my children will have to build bridges for their children to walk across them."

Then the director came and yelled at me. I don't think I can put into words what he told me. He sent me away and he told me not to come back again, ever. I had no idea why or what had happened, I just knew that it had to be something utterly terrible. Either my father had died or… I didn't even dare to go home. I just crawled underneath a bush outside of the school building and I imagined I was dead. This was a moment of utter despair for me when I wished I had rather died. I believe that this really was the high point of my fear. I wanted to die and I didn't want to learn why I couldn't go to school anymore. Eventually, at some point, I went home. When I arrived, I saw my parents dancing like mad. They were totally relaxed. 'What happened? We're free to go to Germany'. So for me, it was a moment of complete doom while for them, it was a highlight."