Urban Albert

“After the war, when the Germans went away, all this was left empty. There were Bulgarians here, Romanians. There were lots of different people in the border regions here. The Czechoslovak government found out that there is an awful lot of Slovaks all over the world. So they went around the world saying, if you want to, you can come to Czechoslovakia. They even dropped leaflets by plane. What all they’ll give us, how they tricked us. People set off there. First, they came for work, then they went back and took their families. The first people with their families went in ’46. They received a farm, some fields and cattle, but that was all confiscated again anyway. They came the next year saying, if you want to come, you can register and you won’t travel by your own means, but by a transport.”

“There was a hill overlooking us, and the boys and girls would always meet up there after lunch. They’d talk and talk, and someone would suggest they’d throw a party. They sent someone for a musician, and there was music and drinking. That’s how people enjoyed themselves there. Say, they’d send some younger boy to go to so and so and bring a girl. To ask her parents for permission, that her betrothed had requested it. People knew each other there, so they’d let her go.”