Fotograf Magazine

It is hard to describe those contradictory sensations of the spectral and seemingly uncanny that I experienced in my childhood, when in the vicinity of Praděd, in secluded thickets in the midst of pastures I found the remains of buildings; we used to visit clearings in the woods to pick cherries in an old orchard, and at an angle through the forest there ran a strip with no trees – and instead there was an boundary stone, and under the needles one might find cobblestones. I used to imagine how on a Sunday, two thousand villagers would pass the secluded farmstead on their way to the church on the hill. But none of those who remembered the days were left in the region. Only the names carved in the tombstones on the overgrown graveyard gave an inkling of their concrete destinies. And our cottage had once stood in the village square, hosting a fire station, the offices of the municipal authorities, and the local jail. These were not exceptional experiences – why, surely there were hundreds of such villages struck by the expulsion of the German inhabitants after the Second World War. And several dozen others perished in the following years, as a result of mining, dam construction and other circumstances.