Ferenc Schlaffer

„After my work shift I returned home, I handed my wage over to my Mum, and then I decided it was the day to… Q.: To leave. And did you mention it to your mother? A.: No, I didn’t. Q.: Did you go home, did you give her your money and..? A.: Well, I said simply that I was leaving but I didn’t add that I was leaving the country. Q.: Did you go straight to the border line? A.: First I took my bike, then I got it off and… in the meantime I met my sister and her young daughter, and then I turned to go to the border. Q.: Where did you cross it? A.: In Pornóapáti between the Hungarian custom house and the station where the Austrian custom officers were. Q.: Weren’t there any patrols? A. : There were, certainly there were, but for those who had borned and lived there it wasn’t a problem where and when there was any chance to leave the country across the green border. Q.: So you knew the border defence structure, didn’t you? A.: Right, how could we not know it?! We was living there, I had been born there, I saw the defence system for eighteen years. Q.: Was it really so simple? Did you just go there and..? A.: Yes, I went there, I climbed up to the wire fencing and I crossed it. Q.: Didn’t it give a sign of alert? A.: No, it didn’t. It was a simple wire, it was an ordinary wire… of which usually fences are made at family houses. Q.: Did you look around to see where the guards were or did you just climb up? A.: I knew well where they were. There were some of them also in the wooden tower. Q.: Could they see you? A.: Yes, I think they could if they had turned into that direction, but... Q.: Did you check where they were looking at? Didn’t you fear of being shot at? A.: I was sure they didn’t shoot at me because I was exactly the custom house and they would have shot in it. Q.: You crossed the border very quickly then, didn’t you? A.: Yes, I did. Q.: Did it happen in some seconds? A.: Right, it was an event of some seconds. A young boy climbed up to the fence and he jumped over to the neighbours’. It happened simply like that.”

„After leaving the industrial school I continued to work at my place, but it wasn’t a long time I worked here in Hungary because I had decided even before to leave my country, this one, Hungary. Q.: When did you have this idea at the first time? A.: I had this in mind as early as when I was a child... This was a country where I shouldn’t have been born, I didn’t want to serve this country, it is simple like that. Q.: Did you tell your parents that you were leaving? A.: No, obviously no. How could you tell such a thing? What sort of parents did let their child leave? Q.: And have you thought about it wether it worthed or not to leave Hungary? Had it a positive or a rather negative influence on your future? How do you consider it? A.: Well, if I reconsider it I have to say that I made quite a lot of money at home when I left, I earned more than my father. In the first month for example… Q.: Why, how much did you earn? Do you remember? A.: I made some 2000 forints per month. Q.: As a roofer? A.: Certainly, I was a roofer. But to compare, my father earned only 1500 forints a lot of years later. So my wage wasn’t at all bad in Hungary. I might even to achieve something, to possess something in Hungary, too. I don’t say I didn’t have any possibility, but… I felt deep sorrow for having been deprived of everything we used to have. Q.: Thus didn’t you regret that you had left Hungary, did you? A.: I didn’t regret it at all, I don’t think about it, now my life is this, in the long run.”

„I crossed the border line in Pornóapáti. Q.: And what was the name of the village on the other side of the frontier? A.: Deutsch Schützen. Q.: Pardon? A.: Deutsch Schützen. Q.: Deutsch Schützen? A.: Yes. Then I was brought to Eisenberg, I could sleep there and after it... let me see, I left Hungary on the 18th... Q.: In which month? A.: No, I was wrong, I left on the 25th… Q.: I see, but in which month? A.: It was the 25th of October. It left in five day time after my birthday. Q.: Did you have a special reason to leave that day? Did this date mean somything? Why did you schedule your leaving after your birthday? A.: It was absolutely necessary to do it after my birthday because if I had left the country as a juvenile, I might have been given back to the Hungarian state. Q.: But why, was there any bilateral agreement on it you knew? A.: Young people under the age of 18 was transported back to Hungary to the parents. Austria had to hand them over because they were juvenile and they couldn’t... Q.: Couldn’t they decide, couldn’t they act on their own? A.: Right, they couldn’t act and couldn’t decide on their own future.”