Hubert Kirchner

“We were in Horní Heřmanice for a while, probably until September, and then came the order to leave the Czechoslovak Republic. We all went to Klodzko. We arrived to Hraničky. There was a Czech mayor in Vilémovice, and he told us: ´Don’t go there. Stay here in Hraničky.´ Fine. That was in September, we spent the winter there and we stayed there until May, and then an order came: ´Get out of here, we don’t want you here.´ And so we went to Klodzko. The Poles let us stay for one night. ´Then go back.´ They led us back. We walked to the schoolhouse in Hraničky, where we had been accommodated before, we cooked some potatoes and we had a meal. Then there came an order written in German that we were to leave Czechoslovakia immediately. We thus went to Bernartice; there is the lower village there, which is called Heinersdorf in German. We stayed at the border. They walked with us all the way to the border, and the policemen had rifles with bayonets. There we waited what would happen. Suddenly the Poles disappeared, and so did the policemen with the bayonet, and that was it. We stayed there. So we walked back and that was it.”

“We fled from Heřmanice, because the Poles were already wreaking havoc there. They assumed control. Especially those people who had been assigned there to work with the farmers. They wanted to imprison our mom. Mom said that they had a sewing machine there and one of the transmission belts was missing. They were cursing her and asking where it was and threatening to imprison her. She came home and she said that we were leaving. That we were going to Czechoslovakia. We thus ran away and that was it.”