We were saved from the expulsion

Otto Peschka comes from a Czech-German family, and during the war his father had to serve in the German army. His mother was Czech, but even so the family was to be driven out of their home during the “wild expulsion” of Germans from Czechoslovakia. “It was a shock for us, we weren’t expecting it. A commissar rode into our street on a horse and proclaimed that we must all prepare for our expulsion to Germany, and that we should be standing outside the next morning with a maximum of fifteen kilos per person. Just choosing what to take, what to fit into those fifteen kilos, whether to take an extra pair of shoes or a jacket – was agonising because you couldn’t take both.” But the worst was the uncertainty – they didn’t know where they'd go or what would happen to them. They knew that Germany was bombed to bits, flat on its back. The family was saved from this desperate situation by chance. As they were standing in front of their house with their belongings on a cart, one of the commissars recognised Otto’s mother as a classmate from grammar school in Vysoké Mýto. When she explained how they came to be there, that she had been married to a German since 1930, he told her: “You know what? Go home the lot of you, I’ll vouch for you to the national committee and tell them that you’re Czech. It was such a liberating moment of relief, especially for Mum.”