Matthias Slunsky

* 1925

National minorities, Moravian Croats
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    Corpus Christi

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    “There were four altars built out on the main street, four stations. We went in procession from the church, around, and back again. The road was covered all over with fresh green grass. Every farmer we stopped by mowed down his clover and prepared it like that. So we didn’t walk over stones but grass.”

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    On the western front

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    “Our year group was conscripted, and I was sent to France, all the way to the Atlantic, to Cherbourg. The invasion was close by. The English and the Americans pushed forward, we just retreated backward. Well, we were just boys, after all, right? Then I was wounded. A grenade blasted the car over, I was broken to bits. I lay there, the English found me, they sent me to Germany. I was lucky I didn’t end up an invalid. And that was the end of the war for me.”

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    Praha, 16.06.2016

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The partisans didn’t know anything about farming, but they just declared it was theirs, and that was that

Matthias Slunsky
Matthias Slunsky
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
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Matthias Slunsky was born in 1925 into a Croatian family in Frélichov. They spoke Croatian at home, but he learnt Czech at the Czech primary school and German after the southern Moravian border region was annexed to the Third Reich and the children had to attend a German school in Drnholec. In 1943 he was drafted into the German army and stationed in France near the city of Cherbourg. He was wounded by a grenade and taken for treatment and recovery to Vienna. After the war he walked home to Frélichov. In summer 1945 the boys and girls from the Croatian villages were to help the Russians take confiscated horses to Austria. During this trip Matthias Slunsky met his future wife, the Croat Růžena Mikuličová from Nový Přerov. They escaped to Austria together in 1948 and settled down in Vienna.

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