Reconciliation is back on track. Also in Bärnau
Stáhnout obrázek
Ferdinand Zwerenz (Ferdl) was born on May 29, 1939 in the village of Zadní Pavlův Studenec (Hinterpaulusbrunn) in the former most populous village of the Tachov part of the Bohemian Forest, Paulusbrunn. Father Franz Zwerenz was conscripted into the war on the side of Nazi Germany. Mother Emma took care of little Ferdl and younger brother Manfred, who was born in 1942. They lived with her parents on a small farm. Before the end of the war, her father returned home and the family was complete again. In 1946, the Zwerenz family was deported in a cattle car from the Tachov assembly camp to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. Before the deportation, the father worked in the so-called Prince‘s factory, located between Pavlův Studenec and the Upper Palatinate town of Bärnau. During the expulsion, he received a ticket from the manager of this factory, which called him back to work in the factory. And so the family moved from Magdeburg in East Germany back to the Czech-German border in Bärnau. Little Ferdl missed two years of school because of the displacement. He then started primary school in Bärnau when the family settled in the town. In 1949, the witness‘s sister Christa was born. After finishing school, he went straight to work in a button factory. He started at Fichtner, and later spent 46 years at Mühlmeier in Bärnau. In 1960 he married. He and his wife built a house and brought three sons into the world, who still live in and around Bärnau. The siblings Manfred and Christa and his wife have passed away. He first looked at the Tachov region right after the revolution, but he could not find his family home or any other house in Pavlův Studenec. The village and all its settlements had been gradually razed to the ground since 1949. The so-called border zone separating communist Czechoslovakia from capitalist West Germany was built on its territory.
