Rise and fall of a family business.

1932 started off very troubling for the German Bohemians living in Czechoslovaki. Some of the Germans were proud of the achievements made by Adolf Hitler and his national socialist party, making Germany economically strong again and rebuilding the military back up. Although they hadn’t lived in Germany for 700 years, they were proud of their heritage, still spoke German, still thought of themselves as German. Then there others who looked at the rise of Germany as a problem, Hitler as a buffoon and a thug. The American depression was hurting Europe and their glass business, and maybe Hitlers rise would bring war and tension to the region. All they wanted was to live in peace and make glass. The men of the family read the daily newspapers and were worried.

The events in Bavaria and Austria were far away, and although they were interesting and exciting to the Germans in Czechoslovakia, they didn’t see that it concerned them directly, but stirred the ethnic pride in them, and the Slovaks in the country paid attention. Then Poland was attacked, and the ethnic Germans there were repatriated into the Reich as citizens, even though they had been living in Poland for centuries just like the Bohemians in Czechoslovakia. The war was getting closer!

The Germans followed closely the news and Hitlers demands for the return of the ethic German areas of Czechoslovakia to Germany’s third Reich, that the Germans there needed his protection. Most of the glass families were outraged, they weren’t being discriminated against. They had a very good life in the northern mountains of Bohemia, even in Prague. They were Czechoslovakian! But the Allies were weak, and the British prime minister Neville Chamberlin caved in to Hitlers demands, giving him all the parts of Czechoslovaki that had ethnic Germans living in it. He called it Sudutenland. And just like that, they were German citizens. If they resisted, they were earmarked for eventual punishment. When the troops marched in, the new German citizens were ordered to line the streets and welcome the troops as saviors and conquering hero’s. Almost immediately, the young boys in the family were told to join the Hitler youth movement, or they could not be enrolled in school. A lot of families welcomed the events that happened, and turned a blind eye on the negative things, like the rounding up of Jews and the closing of Jewish businesses. Our family was concerned, many of their business acquaintances were Jews, and personal friends. But what could they do? Nothing.

The war dragged on, and the glass business slowed down to almost nothing. The factory was converted to making ammunition and various war materials. But they kept all the equipment, tools, graphite molds, glass rods, hidden in the attic and basement for when the war was over.

which it was, in 1945. Hitler was dead, Germany surrendered. The Soviet Union rolled in and claimed Czechoslovakia for themselves. The nightmare was over. No, it wasn’t.