This video is currently only available in German. Below you will find an English translation of the audio track.
“Until 1938 everything seemed pretty normal to me.
I spoke to a woman yesterday who said that as soon as the Nazis were at the helm in Germany there would be changes here. But, for example, our cherry trees - 40 - that had recently been planted in Neuhof, were completely destroyed one day.
The second was that we saw many swastikas in our yard that had been painted on during the night.
On May 1st you could almost measure the changes, because in 1938 hundreds of people belonging to the Sudeten German Party walked past our house or marched past, one would say. And there were only two Social Democrats left. That was the postman Marian and Frau Habezeile, the mother of my friend Ilse.
By the way, they were the only Protestants in town and that is why she was exempt from religious instruction and so we had the opportunity to spend an hour together. And Ilse’s sister Erna is well known. She was a very active Social Democrat and even had a paratrooper hid in her apartment in Vienna who had come from England. And the Gestapo picked her up and she swallowed poison and died in 1944.
I would like to add that 40 years later, 50 years later, I met up with Ilse again and I expressed my admiration for her mother and sister. And she said: “Yes, you know, politics only brought bad luck. And I have nothing to do with it at all.””