Josef Lawitschka

“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.”

“It’s important for the descendants of the Croats to know that their roots lie in Frélichov. We say that ours are in Croatia, our great-great-great-great-grandmothers came from Croatia. But because they lived in Frélichov for such a long time, the current youth have their roots in Frélichov. For those who have both parents Croatian, this is very important. For those from mixed marriages, I can’t really say either way.”