Anetchen, girl from the Sudetenland

August 1937

Little Anetchen is celebrating her sixth birthday and preparing to start her first year at a Czech minority school in the Sudetenland. A year later, however, everything changes. The Sudetenland is annexed by Germany, and Anetchen must transfer to a German school, where, as a half-Czech girl, she endures difficult times. Her adolescence and first love are increasingly marked by the harsh era – first by the departure of her Czech and Jewish friends, and then, after the war, by the expulsion of her German friends and relatives and the widespread hatred of Germans. The older Anetchen gets, the more she perceives the paradox of her world – first she wasn't German enough, and now she's not Czech enough.

Anetchen's story is a powerful depiction of the fates of people in the borderlands during the dramatic historical upheavals of the 20th century.