Wilma Iggers tells in front of pupils of the Graf-Stauffenberg-Gymnasium in Osnabrück.
This video is currently only available in German. Below you will find an English translation of the audio track.
“So we didn’t think about emigration at all.
The connection in Austria was not made until 1938 and we changed our plans. We planned to enlarge and expand the house, the work should start on Monday and that was stopped.
My mother said at the same time: “We are the next ones” and sent the good silver away to the interior of the country. We didn’t think that all of Czechoslovakia would be affected, just our peripheral area.
And then - sometime in the spring - an acquaintance came from northern Bohemia, where the Nazi activities of the Sudeten Germans were much more active, and told us about a friend who had emigrated to Canada and who wanted to encourage him to come along too. He asked if we wouldn’t be interested in it too. The talks continued.
We learned that Canada is accepting farmers. There were a few other categories that Canada included, such as so-called capitalists who had at least $ 10,000 per family, which was out of the question for us.
My father decided to go to Canada with a friend from Germany and see it. That was in the early summer. In the meantime the group that was interested was almost complete […]. It finally reached 39 people. And some of them consisted of farmers - so it was always referred to as farmers - but also of people who were not farmers but who had money abroad.
One problem was that not only did you need money for the crossing, you also had to have at least $ 1,000 per person [she corrects herself] per family to even make a down payment on a farm. That was actually ridiculously little, but we didn’t have that.
So my father had to look for people who had money and who also wanted to emigrate and who [had] the money abroad. Incidentally, that was forbidden in Czechoslovakia.
So he always put families together, a family of real farmers and a family - in one case it was a doctor, in the other it was a young lawyer, etc.”