Osnabrück, 2005
“Where did I live? I was born and raised in Czechoslovakia. I’d like to give a rough idea of the geographical location at that time (see map). We were always told: right in the heart of Europe – first Bohemia, then Moravia, then Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine. Czechoslovakia had 14 million inhabitants at the time, and about 3 million of them were German. The Germans were mainly settled in the peripheral region of Bohemia, bordering Germany and Austria. In Moravia, there were more scattered German settlements, but they were a large minority. I come from a small town roughly here (points to map), at the foot of the Bohemian Forest. And the town was… German-speaking, with a 10–15% Czech minority.”