Josef Lawitschka

“I can still remember how the Czech soldiers came in 1938, when the mobilisation was declared. The whole village was full of cars, cannons, soldiers. All along the border from Znojmo to Břeclav and goodness knows how further, there were bunkers; every family had to go help dig them, to prepare everything for if Hitler wanted to come. Fine. And then suddenly one morning, the Czechs, soldiers, cars, cannons were gone. The Germans came, Hitler. So the Czechs abandoned us, they left without dealing a single blow. No one protected us from Hitler, and that was a great pity. Now they say we were collaborators. But we didn’t collaborate - the ones who didn’t protect us against Hitler were those who collaborated. There was nothing else left for us to do because the German government said: ‘You are Croats. If you support us, you can stay. If you don’t, we will deport you.’”

“We didn’t have electricity in Frélichov, so a drummer, Uncle Medek, would walk around the whole village and tell us what’s new, what the village council wanted to inform us about, and so on. One time he came to Mum and told her we were to go to the hall, that the doctor was waiting for us there. It was in May, June, Mum looked for us, we’d gone bathing. ‘Come, children, we have to go to the hall, the doctor wants to check you up. You’re clean, so we’ll go straight there.’ So we went, the doctor checked us and said: ‘You’re healthy.’ Well yes, but why? ‘You can go to the coal mines.’ Šani Kulbinger was with us, a year younger than us. And Mum said: ‘Children, we have to cross the border. We’ll cross the border rather than let you go to the mines.’”

“For many years we weren’t allowed to go closer than ten kilometres from Frélichov. If they caught you, they’d put you in prison. That was under Communism. And when I came to Frélichov for the first time in many years, you can imagine what it was like. I walked around, I knew who lived where, I knew the children, we all played together in the street, we went to school together - but who is there now? Strange people live there, you don’t know them... when you think about it, it’s awfully sad. But it doesn’t hurt me any more, I’m glad I’m in Austria, I have a good life there.”