"Refugees then and now"

The word refugees was always used, although these so-called refugees were expellees.

If 200 expellees had to be accommodated in a small village like ours with around 450 inhabitants, this was a big task. The priest and the mayor had to cope with this task in some way.

The expellees did not only have no home, but also no household goods (pot, bed, bowl, plate, etc.). They were fully dependent on the village’s inhabitants. As far as the circumstances allowed, it was helped where it was possible.

In turn, the refugees helped where they could with farming. We were a 100% peasant village.

Where did people work together?

Children: Boys cared for cows and girls watched the children.

The old people helped with the stables and on the field.

In spring it started with planting potatoes and forage beets, caring for root crops, haymaking and later grain was reaped. There was hardly any mechanization. The grain was threshed at the farm, and the dung spread out by hand. There was work for everyone, because most men were fighting in the Second World War. The potato and forage beet harvest in autumn was also hard work, but no special knowledge was needed to do it.

In return for work expellees got:

For milking a mug full of milk.

When a pig was slaughtered, the refugees got a mug full of “Metzelsuppe” (the water in which the sausages were boilt). If some potatoes could be found on the fields after harvest, expellees collected them.

They were given small gardens from the parish, where they could then provide for themselves. In the common forest, they were allowed to pick wood.

Triplets were born into one of the families.

Ten marriages were contracted, four of them remained in the village.