My great-uncle comes from the “Altvatergebirge” in the Czech Republic, the former Sudetenland. From there he had to flee on 22^nd March 1946. At that time he was 6 years old. They were told they would have to be at the village square in 1-2 hours with only 15 kg of luggage per person which they also should be able to carry themselves. If the Germans hadn’t been there in time, they were shot or hanged by the Czechs. From there they were escorted to the railway station. Cattle wagons were already waiting to remove the people from their homes. The trees were ‘decorated’ with bodies of Germans who hadn’t appeared at the meeting point in time. My great-uncle’s family consisted of his grandparents, his parents, and six young children. An eight-day trip in a cramped wagon to a refugee camp in Augsburg lay ahead of them. They weren’t allowed to leave the wagon once during that time.  A small container served them and 50 other people as a toilet and the stacked boxes and trunks were the beds for the children.

When they arrived at the camp in Augsburg, all new arrivals were deloused and received a refugee ID. Afterwards, they were brought to barracks equipped with camp beds. There was no bath or any laundry facilities. Three times a day they got food in a "canteen".

After a few weeks the family was sent to the reception camp in Donauwörth. They only stayed there for a few weeks, because their next destination was Oberndorf. There, they lived on a farm. The children were sent to school, and helped the farmer with all his work afterwards. Most of them were sent to the fields to look after the cows. They earned a bag of wheat per season for that. The best time of the year for the refugees was the harvesting of potatoes, because they were allowed to keep a lot of the potatoes for themselves. If they could’t work for the farmer, he and his family went begging to the neighbour villages. They begged for clothes, food, and everything they could get. But very often they returned home empty handed, because the refugees were despised by the locals. Sometimes they were lucky though and got some bread from nice peasants and, on a fortunate day, even an egg. If money had been available, then you could buy a little meat in the ‘Freibank’, a butcher’s shop for poor people in which sick animals were slaughtered. Unfortunately, this was never the case. The only thing the family got to eat from the farmers were milk and white bread for breakfast. But that was better than nothing. Everyone lived in two rooms which had the size of a storage room. And again there was no bathroom, only a privy in the yard and they slept on straw. My great-uncle’s mother found work in Wörnitzstein and soon moved there. His grandpa moved away, too. If he wanted to visit one of them, or both, he had to walk these distances on foot. Some of his siblings did also look for a job and moved away when they got one. Everyone of his family, who did not live with him in Oberndorf, lived in another city or village. Thus he sometimes walked from Oberndorf to Mertingen, then to Bäumenheim and then from Donauwörth to Wörnitzstein and back again. This is a distance of about 20 km. At this time he went to 4th grade.

After his father was allowed to work for the railway, the remaining family could move to a flat in Donauwörth. After the introduction of the German Mark every adult got 60 DM and every child 40 DM. And of course young Helmut went back to school. At that time, there were free school meals for refugees consisting of a cocoa and a bun. The other children envied the refugees for this, because they never got those things at home. My great-uncle and his friends often enjoyed bathing in the Donau. They didn’t have much, but they built a little hideout there for themselves. Once, they had the idea to nick a few apples from a farmer. It was a dark night and the farmer waited for them with a pitchfork. He wanted to catch them, but they ran too fast. After a little while a friend (also a refugee) wanted to buy apples, but the shop’s assistant didn’t want to sell apples to a refugee. So he went back at night to steal some, but he didn’t know that there was a dog who revealed him with his barking. When the shop’s assistant saw the "thief", he killed him with a knife. And all of this happened just because of an apple which nobody misses today.

 Then with 13 ½, my great-uncle became a bricklayer, although his wish had always been to be a butcher. However, at those times you had to be happy about every job you got.

A few years later, my great-uncle met my great-aunt Agnes. But refugees were still not considered to be natives. So my great-aunt always had to endure comments about her being together with a refugee. It should take another generation to overcome these superstitions.

I would also like to tell the story of her family, which is also the family of my grandfather, briefly. Like every German family they had to take in some refugees. Since no one wanted to accommodate a married couple with tuberculosis, the mayor had the duty to take them in. The mayor was my great-grandfather. There also was a prisoner of war in his house. But from 1945 onwards, prisoners of war were allowed to return to their home countries. He left and never learned that he had fathered a child in Germany. This was quite common in those days.

A lot of the female refugees used to work in tailor’s shops in their homes and therefore they were very good knitters and tailors. Very often they didn’t have work, so they knitted sweaters for the family of my grandpa and received food for it. In 1969, the first real workplace for women opened up nearby. Before that, women took care of the household and the children or went to the Ruhr area to find work there. At school, there were 100 children in two classes. With the refugees, the first wave of protestants came to school.

At that time, there were 1000 people living in Otting. There were four barracks near the station and a poor house for those refugees, who had nothing left. But from 1950 onwards, the villages emptied again because the refugees moved to large cities such as Stuttgart to find work. In 1954, family reunions began. People who had stayed behind or who ended up in different cities or parts of Germany, were reunited with their family.