Their two-year-old son saved their lives

At the end of July 1947, the three-year-old Doris Remešová together with her brother, pregnant mother, father, and grandmother had to move to Opočno in the foothills of the Orlické hory Mountains, where they would be assigned to work in agriculture. Their story was taking place on the backdrop of the dispersion of the remaining Germans throughout Czechoslovakia. The farmer, who was supposed to receive them, refused to do so: “When we got off the train at the station in Opočno, the peasants started arriving at the station to take the German family they had been assigned. A peasant from Slavětín was supposed to take us to his farm but when he saw the state our family was in... My mom was pregnant. It was on July 27, 1947, when we were moved out. My sister was born on September 5, 1947. So you can imagine what we looked like. The farmer said: ‘I’m not going to feed so many hungry mouths’. He turned around and left us alone at the train station.” Doris Remešová adds that in this desperate situation, her parents actually began thinking about suicide. Fortunately, everything turned out differently. “My brother told me later at the hospital when he was at risk with cancer, what he had once been told by my dad. As they were sitting on the boxes at the Opočno train station, my father and mother were thinking about suicide. Everyone else was gone and they suddenly found themselves alone at the station. They had absolutely no idea what they were supposed to do. With two small children, a grandmother starved to the bone and my mother in a state of pregnancy. In this hopeless situation, my brother would keep running around the boxes and peeping out at them. He’d do it again and again, running around and peeping out. My father later told him: ‘you actually saved our lives there.'” she recalled.