Lukáš Martin

"They came with a so-called gray passport. It was actually a very unique passport, which was gray in color and which was valid only in Yugoslavia. This meant that you could travel to Yugoslavia with it, but it was not valid in any other countries. You could not travel to Italy or Germany, for example, with that passport. And that was our situation - we travelled using the gray passports. But where the socialist regime or the communist regime recalculated was that Yugoslavia not only allowed people to travel further from Yugoslavia, but also allowed the United Nations and the office of the Commissioner for Refugees to open its office in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. Citizens of the Czech Republic could also register directly as refugees at this office in Belgrade and then, at the expense of the United Nations, stay in Belgrade and wait for their asylum procedure to be completed and granted asylum in one state or another."

"My brother and I were very young and our parents consulted with us. We saw it as a great adventure, so we had no reason to prevent or discourage them in any way. In fact, we saw it as a great adventure, also because our parents told us that they didn't want to stay in Europe and that they wanted to go to a distant country like South Africa or the United States or Australia or New Zealand. So for me as a fifteen-year-old boy, it was a huge challenge. We supported our parents. We knew about it circa six months before we ran away. In fact, those six months our whole life revolved or adapted so that we could leave the republic in June 1982."