Dear John; This is a letter from a person that found your web-site and read my letter to Annemarie. I have permission to add this to my letter in your web-site. Wishing you a merry Christmas and many blessings. sincerely ; Else Buegge-Wood Buegge-Wood Translation

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Dear Else, I read your letter to Annemarie on the internet. I am just a year younger than you are, and I am from Karlsbad - yes, the same town you described in your letter. While your were at the railroad station then, my mother and I stood in front of our house with bowls of disinfectant to wash and bandage soldier's wounds, giving them a little herb tea (there was no more food) to help them on their way to reach the American lines. We, whose families had lived for centuries in the Egerland, had no idea that our homeland would be taken away from us with all our possessions. We might just as well have followed you right then, rather than wait around for times getting increasingly worse.

While the war was "over for you in June 1945" a most horrible time started for us. First, the Czechs booted us out of our home at 1 AM - in the middle of the night - August 21, 1945 - and like you, I had dysentery and my mother was ill with furunculous. We sat on the steps of our house just with what we had on our bodies. All our possessions were behind the closed door we leaned against. It was a most incredible Spring and Summer that year, as if Nature had to provide "warmth" denied us by other forces. I remember sitting in front of our house, with my sick mother in my arms, taking as much comfort as giving, with a sky incredibly brilliant with many twinkling stars and crickets chirping. And with every shooting star a wish went from my heart towards heaven: "let my mother be healthy again" ... I was 16 years old .... a kind neighbor, who still lived in their house (they were booted out a week later!) gave us shelter for a few days. It was sheer luck that we found employment as laborers in our own factory, which gave us at least means for survival, a job, medical care, money and enough time, until my father arrived back from having spent some time in a German Strafkompanie for his antifascist leanings. We had no doubt that our properties would be returned to us eventually......

Fate decided differently. In 1947 the Czech people voted for the Communist regime. Of course, they had to, otherwise they would have had to return the German properties they had stolen from our 3 Million German Bohemians! Now they became even more mean against Germans, and not even their own Czechs escaped this political madness! This time, they "collected" us on big trucks with whatever possessions we had regained through our earnings. It was meager, but essential! Actually, we were not worried, because we thought that they would just take us - like all the others - to Germany. However, the trucks did not drive West, but headed East. They unloaded us at Vlaschim (near Beneschau, Prag) at the Market Square in the middle of Bohemia. There several farmers with horsewagons looked us over. Some had riding crops in their hands which they snipped against their boots, pointed at us and argued among themselves until they had reached a deal. Yes, you guessed it, we were auctioned off as farm slaves.

My father, who has helped our Czech Director of Police in 1938 to escape from the occupying German Army, frantically searched for our family and it took him years to find us. He was instrumental to achieve our release and brought us to a refugee camp to be transported to Germany. I, however, had to stay behind at the Beneschau hospital with gangrene in my right arm and seeing my parents leave, I was totally lost. After 17 weeks with drainage tubes in my arm and God only knows how many operations they told me that my right arm had to be amputated below the elbow. A kind Austrian doctor told me about Penicillin which was available in the American occupied zone of Germany and helped me escape from the hospital after calling the Czech Director of Police in my hometown. They brought me to the refugee camp, and my father's friend made it possible to get Penicillin ! Although badly scarred, I still have my right hand and arm today......

It was Spring 1949 when my parents were transported to the Refugee Camp at Hammelburg, Unterfranken, but by then my parents were so despondent that they left this world of their own free will. I married a young man from my own home, the Egerland, and with our two little children we came from Germany to the USA.

Aida Kraus Baumbusch
akibb1@verizon.net