Mesto Libava, North Moravia, Feb 5 (CTK) – Old tools, dishes, maps, photographs, a sewing machine and a shop sign are among the items fans have put on display to present the life of the German inhabitants of the bygone villages in what is the Libava military training area now.
The exhibition has been installed in a windmill in the town of Mesto Libava, which is the area’s administrative centre.
Local German inhabitants were transferred from the hilly area after World War Two. The Czechoslovak military gradually pulled their abandoned villages down and built training grounds in the area.
Jan Hnatek, a resident of Mesto Libava and deputy head of the local Lubavia association for the development of the area, has told CTK that the old windmill, too, was originally to be pulled down, but the town succeeded in saving it.
“The [windmill’s] interior was emptied by thieves. Tourists dropped in now and then…, so I and my grandson decided to put some things we found at home or received from local people on display there,” Hnatek said.
Most of the items are those local Sudeten Germans would use in their homes, such as a large creamer and a wooden trunk.
The trunk was provided for the exhibition by a woman from a nearby village, who was 14 years old when the war ended and who was to be transferred along with other Germans. In the last moment, the organisers took her down from the lorry and told her to stay at home, Hnatek said.
There are also two items, a dish and a spoon, that date back to the long period after 1968 when Soviet occupiers stayed in Libava.
The windmill of the Dutch type in Mesto Libava is a piece of national cultural heritage. Old documents first mentioned it in 1875. As the only of the area’s former 24 windmills, it did not serve as a shooting target and has been preserved.
Hnatek said a total of 18 villages, in which German inhabitants had lived, disappeared from the Libava area after the war. Along with them, local cemeteries were destroyed, which the Lubavia association is trying to restore.
The association recently signed a declaration with the Czech military on cooperation in this respect.
The military previously vowed to protect pieces of heritage in Libava and enabled visits to the area by its former inhabitants and their offspring.
