Whatever happened, happened. We need to forgive each other.
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Heinrich Böhm was born on 26 January 1940 in the now vanished village of Rychnůvek (Deutsch Reichenau in German) in the Kaplice district. His mother was a housewife, taking care of the children, and his father worked as a mail carrier. The Böhms lived in a rented house in Rychnůvek since 1928. The father, originally from Rožmital (German: Rosenthal), worked there as a postman. The family survived World War II without much hardship until the end of the war, when first American troops and then Soviet troops passed through Rychnůvek. There were more problems with the latter, people were afraid of them. After the end of the war, the Böhm family witnessed the so-called „wild expulsion“ of their neighbours, and they themselves gave shelter to two women and children who had fled Hungary. In order to avoid forced displacement, they finally decided to leave on foot with a few belongings and a baby boy in a pram to Austria in the autumn of 1945, where they settled in Altenberg near Linz. The Böhms received Austrian citizenship after six years of residence. Heinrich graduated from a trade school and worked as a salesman for factory equipment. In the 1960s, the Böhms decided to go and see the places they had left in 1945. It was a big shock for them, because they could no longer find their house in Rychnůvek. The entire Böhm family still maintains very active and warm contacts with their Czech homeland, participates in the commemoration of Rychnůvek, the development of Rožmital and the surrounding area and wishes that good relations and mutual forgiveness between the two countries and also throughout Europe will develop.
