User:Klubera

My life in a nutshell. -- Once upon a long time, in the Eagle Mountains of East Bohemia (Czech Republic), in a little village, there a boy was born. That’s me. After my very lucky early days I started to visit the Czech elementary school, but no long. At an evening in the autumn 1938, I vent to bed as a little citizen of the Czechoslovak Republic, and awaked in the morning as a member of Deutsches Reich. Therefore I must visit the German school. The German language was not strange to me at all, because many neighbors of our Czech family were Germans. Their early enthusiasms of coming „heim ins Reich“ lasted not long, because they must on their plants on the hills, where are growing rather stones as potatoes, work hard before and much harder after. The war took-off not only their products, but what has been worse, the life of the men too. As a Czech I had no chance continue in a higher education, but the Nazi state machinery allowed me to learn to become a weaver only. I am sure, to this „lucky“ helped me the fact, that the German language made me no problems. After two years, in the autumn 1944, I took in for an examination and it lasted not long, I became an invitation for the German recruitment, which should be arranged exactly on my sixteenths. What a special gift for me to the birthday it was. I had to wait there in a group of circa thirty boys, a then a German soldier asked, if somebody of us reports himself to any other nation. I took this chance for me immediately. The soldier wrote on my waybill a red „T“, what means „Tscheche“. But I must pass the recruitment too. On its other end, there was sitting a high top brass, and I standing naked in front of him, having on my left side a sitting couple of city mayors belonging to the recruits, expected his resolution. After a while he exclaimed: „You are able to serve for the army, what weapon are you preferring?“ Because this adventure was not the first, where I had to defense my nation, I proclaimed: „Ich bin ein Tscheche“, that is: “I am a Czech”. The Officer stared at me a while, and then he said: „Dann werden sie ausgesetzt“. What means: „Then, you will be discarded“. In the first moment I was not able to appraise this verdict, my only thought was – hurry up from here. I received an orange paper with my photo on it, where the text: „Wird ausgesetzt“ is written. But coming out on the fresh air, I made a second look at it, and a dread catches me. The famous firmness of the Germans failed here totally. The same date as the year of the recruitment was written as the year of my birth too, that is 1944. After a while the shock retreated, and I stated, this not my mistake, and went home. I have never more been asked belonging this recruitment adventure, but many boys were after that in a short time called for the army. Two of them, who have been worked at the same factory like me, I met after two months, and they told me, that he have had to go to Hamburg, and serve at the anti-aircraft defense (flak). Then came the winter, the spring 1945, and then after six and a half year we became again the Czechoslovak Republic. But our pleasure did not last long …. You will surely know why. In spite of the fact, it was not originally my dream to work at the textile industry, I continued in this line and stayed there till my old-age pension. The last thirteen years I was employed at the Quality and Standardization control of the Cotton industry main directory. There I made the acquaintance with computers, and made the first steps in programming them…

22:17, 20 December 2008 --Klubera(UTC)