They raped Mum, Grandma hanged herself

In 1945, the German inhabitants of Děčín were apprehensive of the arrival of the Red Army, who had come just prior to crowds of refugees from the east. Otto Peschka, the son of Czech-German parents, describes that it was not in fact the Russians but the Czech “gold diggers” who committed the worst acts of brutality on the German inhabitants. They took advantage of the fact that most of the men from the German families were fighting on the frontline, so they raped and pillaged. Many people were not able to cope with the situation, and suicides were common. “Our neighbour Mrs Teichmann drowned herself. She tied her two three-year-old children to herself and jumped from the bridge into the Elbe river. Every day we heard of another suicide. And then it reached our family: two thugs came in with pistols and raped Mum. They then harassed my sister, inside the town hall. Later on, she went to visit Grandma, who at the time lived upstairs from us. She found Mum in the kitchen, by the stove with the gas knob turned open. Luckily she was only unconscious. She then went to look for Grandma, and found her in the back room after she’d hanged herself from the balcony door. There was no helping her anymore.”