Women's Portraits

Gisela Papke

 A 73-year-old woman of German nationality, she has lived in the Czech Republic since her childhood. Wife,  mother, now a widow.
Her life was permanently affected by the Second World War. Despite many difficulties and the initial language barrier she received professional training and became a fully-fledged member of the Czech society. Fate has not been merciful to her. She lost her only child. After the death of her husband she has remaind alone. She is trying to find new strength to live, and the meaning of life.

You spent part of your childhood in Germany and after the Second World War you and your  family returned to the ancestral homeland, Bohemia.
You have unforgettable memories. Can you tell us your story?

I  was born in 1938 in Friedrichsgrats, Germany, which in 1945 fell to Poland and is now called Grodziec. My ancestors came from Bohemia and had emigrated to Silesia in the 18th century. Czech was taught and spoken in this area. My mother and older siblings spoke Czech and German.
In 1921, after a plebiscite, a new border between Germany and Poland was established, but the territory where we lived remained part of Germany.

My father was a workman, a carpenter, and my mother took care of the household. We were four children. I cannot remember my father. When I was born, he had to go to war. My mother stayed with us kids alone. In 1944 I started school in our town, but the place where we lived was near the Polish-Czech border. Since it was a batttlefront, I didn’t finish the first class and in January 1945 we had to leave our home. The German army retreated, the Russian army liberated Poland, it moved close to the German border, to our home, and we had only twelve hours to evacuate. We ran away with essentials, and so it happened that I ended up without a birth certificate. Hoping to return, my mother hid our all valuables. My siblings buried them in the shed, but we never returned to our home.

My mother quickly managed to arrange a cart to take us to the nearest railway station in West Germany, where we caught a train to the town where my mother's sister lived with her family. It wasn’t easy. We waited at the station for many hours before the train left. The German army was retreating and there was a lot of confusion everywhere. There was fighting to get a place on the train. We children got into the carriage by the window, my mother climbed in after us. She was strong, she had to do everything by herself, she had four children and a two-year-old ailing sister. While packing the necessary things she made sure we had enough to eat and drink.
The journey lasted several days. There was confusion everywhere. When we reached the railway station in Leipzig, there was a raid. We had to leave the train and hide underground. Then again we waited for another train to West Germany. My mother was terrified the we would get lost, so she tied me to a small suitcase and my older siblings carried my youngest sister, who hadn’t started walking yet. After a long and scary journey, we reached our destination. After the attack there were crowds, there was confusion everywhere. The end of the war was approaching, the cities had been bombed, everything was destroyed.    

My mother had eight siblings. All of them found refuge with the eldest sister. We all stayed in her house until the end of the war. There were there twenty-one of us, only women and children.
The fathers began to return gradually. My dad was the last to come back. He found us after the war through the Red Cross, because we had changed our residence and it was our duty to constantly report to the population registry.
We children used to look out for our fathers. Every day we waited at the nearby highway. And when my father returned, I did not recognize him. Actually, I had never known him, I only knew of him. Our father did not know us either, it was such a long time he had been away.

After the end of the Second World War, my parents along with their siblings decided to accept the invitation of the Czechoslovak Republic to return to the homeland of their ancestors. After a thorough examination of the family by the Czechoslovak side we left the U.S. camp only with personal belongings to the place of our future residence which had been chosen for us. It was Chodov near Karlovy Vary.
 In Chodov we were given a house which my parents little by little paid for. My father began working in a construction company and with his first salary my parents bought bedroom furniture. They had to help themselves to get other furniture.

The beginnings were not easy in the Czech Republic. How did you cope with new environment, the transition to a Czech school and the Czech language?
How did your life develop further? 

I was eight at that time.  I could not not say a word in Czech, I did not have any friends. I had to go to a Czech school and straight into the third grade. It was hell. Although my mother spoke Czech, she couldn’t read nor write. She couldn’t help me.  I had to cope all by myself. I was lucky enough to have very good teachers who made sure that by the fourth grade I was   ranked among the other Czech pupils. After that everything flowed normally.
I had friends, I did sports, I didn’t spend much time at home, and because of the war time experience my mother constantly worried about me. Naturally, I looked after my sister.

In Chodov I finished elementary school, and because I had German nationality, I had only two ways to be further educated. Either to become an apprentice of a trade, or to study at nursing school. I decided for nursing school. It was a mistake, I did not last long. I found a position in the project office in Karlovy Vary, signed up for an evening course at the building and technical college, and while working managed to graduate. Here my nationality was not a problem.
Meanwhile, by the age of nineteen I had managed to get married and shortly afterwards divorce. At that time I was doing a lot of sports, skiing, I had a rich social life, I furnished my own flat, and I met my future husband. He used to visit me in Karlovy Vary and two years later we married. I left our large family and moved with him to Cesky Krumlov. It was in 1965.

Did your life change much after the move to Cesky Krumlov? You were affected by a personal tragedy…  

Czech Krumlov at the time was not as beautiful as today. I didn’t really like it, I could not get used to it. Everything was strange to me, I had to get used to the new colleagues in the construction company. I didn’t have any friends. It wasn’t easy to live with my ​​husband's mother either. Sometimes I thought I couldn’t stand it and would return back home.
My husband was a great support. He tried his best to make my life easier. Eventually, I began to take part in social and especially sports activities. We went skiing and hiking, we played volleyball, tennis, and discovered the beauty of our homeland. Little by little I found some friends and got used to life in Cesky Krumlov.
After five years of marriage our longed-for son was born. How good life was to us! Everything receded into the background and we lived only for him. As he was growing up, we introduced him to various sports and at the same time we encouraged him in his own hobbies. He was interested in entomology, modeling, fishing and sports. We had a wonderful life. After graduating , he remained with us in Czech Krumlov. Until one day came a blow that brought us to our knees. Martin, at the age of twenty-six, died tragically. For us, everything was over. We remained alone without our beloved son. Our life had lost meaning.
As the years went by, we had to begin to live again. Slowly we got involved in life around us, we started doing sports again, especially skiing and cycling. It strengthened us.

When you stopped work and retired, you lived happily with your husband, until the next shock came  ...
You are alone. How do you cope?

I worked until the age of 61. Retirement did not end my active life. I tried to keep up my hobbies and interests. My husband had also retired, so we spent our free time at the cottage, in the countryside and we found peace. Twice there was a flood and our cottage was a few days under water. We had to start from the beginning again. The work distracted us from our tragedy.
Gradually, we began to live actively again, play sports and participate in social events. We did everything together, we depended on each other. Until suddenly in 2010, disaster struck. My husband fell ill and died after seven weeks. I stayed alone. It's hard to cope, but I know that I must live on.
 I am involved in various senior activities, I am slowly getting out of my solitude, going back to friends, joining them in various activities. I am interested in world events, I use modern technology to communicate. I take life as it comes. I live in the present.

Františka Kuncová