Martina Paříková

"We arrived at Traiskirchen and there was a reception area and behind it was the camp. In front of that reception area was the place where people were waiting to be admitted, to get into the camp. There we declared that we were from the Czech Republic. And they said, 'We're not taking Czechs, we're not taking them until two days later.' At that time, many people were fleeing Romania because of Ceausescu.There were too many of them. And then the Poles, but they had a more free regime, they ran away and came back. And my husband said, 'But my wife is pregnant, could you take us now?' And they took us, we went to the reception area, we registered, we were given a mess tin, toilet paper and soap. We walked, accompanied by the soldiers, through this wired corridor, then we were ushered into the cell. It was a big room where there were about 40 of us, families with children. Then there were other cells where there were only men, or only women. But the families with children were together. That was on one floor, and for seven days we were not allowed to go out, to find out if we didn´t happen to be internationally wanted criminals. We were photographed and fingerprinted and it was sent, I think, to Interpol in England to see if we were wanted. And then we waited for what was called a political interview. That's what everybody was afraid of. It was a dark room, and there was a door at the end, and behind it was an interrogation room. There was a Czech who interrogated Czechs. And you are sitting in that room and waiting your turn. And you hear what's going on behind the door. Before us there were some guys who had escaped across the hills, through Croatia to Austria. The boys were about 17, and the interrogator was yelling: "I'm going to put you on a train and you're going back home. I'm not leaving you here!' It was very difficult, everybody was afraid of the interrogation. It depended on that person how he was going to interrogate you and whether they were really going to send you back to Czechoslovakia. Everybody was really afraid of that."

"At that time, the young society was divided into groups of scroungers [somráci] and money dealers [veksláci]. I don't know if you've heard of it. Not that they [scroungers] would beg really, but they wore torn jeans, long white shirts, and shoes for old people that had to be unfastened. These boys mostly wore long hair and denim jackets. And the money dealers, they were the people who got to earn big money. They would [illegally] exchange money, foreign currency or special vouchers [bony], that was the currency for special shops [Tuzex] that was valid there. Or they were waiters, or they were in charge of a restaurant. They were just people who exchanged money. And they also looked different, they drove Mercedes and ate in the more expensive restaurants that everybody knew, like the Admiral Restaurant. At the age of 15, you didn't have money or anybody to subsidize you in any way, so we looked more like those scroungers. But then over time, when I was at secondary school, we started going to discos. That was a common life, that on Fridays or Saturdays we went to discos, either to Alfa, where normal people went, or to Valdek, where the money dealers used to go. So we started to distinguish who we were going to talk to. The scroungers were sitting in boozers, the downscale pubs. They were just different people, and the money dealers were different people, too."