Vojtech Zeman

“One Friday evening my compatriot from Nová Baňa visited me. He said we could leave on Sunday if I felt like it. We were supposed to be at Trnava train station at seven o’clock in the evening and wait for other instructions. We had such a meeting with one of our Salesian priests from Bratislava and I told him I was going to cross the borders. And he said to me: ‘Don’t you worry about telling me this.’ I never let him know when and how we’d go. So there were three of us travelling from Bratislava to Trnava and suddenly I saw also other Salesians. However, we didn’t know each other that well. We awaited further instructions.”

“They told us: ‘Buy a ticket to Kúty,’ so we thought we were going to Kúty. The three of us sat in one car. It was obvious that each group bought a ticket to different destination because it was necessary to count on the fact that even conductors who checked our tickets could be cooperating with the police. Then one of our informers came and said: ‘You detrain on the next stop and there we wait for each other.’ Until today I have no idea what was the name of that train stop. We waited until the people left and then only one Salesian remained waiting. His name was Revesz, who was later in Paris; he took care of Slovaks there. He led us to a forest. ‘Wait!’ he said and in half an hour he came together with two guides. ‘Listen to them!’ They took us to some village; actually it was outside the village, where one farmer lived. They made us dinner and it was around midnight. They had a stable for horses and upstairs there was hay, so there we slept in that hay. Two nights later the guides took shoulder bags with smaller military boats to be inflated. There were ten men plus these two guides, so twelve people in total. Of course, we had to throw ourselves down wherever needed as they tried to search us by lights. However, they explained us how to do it all. Hide our face and body, and then the bag. It was such an improvisation back then that today I only wonder how we did it. We didn’t have any oars, only branches. Taking twelve people meant sailing two times. The first group went and they bound up the two dinghies. The guides went each in one dinghy to the other side and then one of them returned with both boats. When a man wanted to get on a dinghy, it lifted up and he fell into the water. So it took some time until we all boarded. The Morava River was a border between Slovakia and Austria and it was somewhere near Šaštín. We went to one station, but we missed the train. The two guides had some Austrian money as they were in that country before, so they bought us tickets. We hid in such farmers’ barrack which was empty. We couldn’t show up, because they had similar clothes. They would recognize us as refugees right away.”

“There were three and two of us. We three greeted them: ‘Buona notte, buona notte.’ But when the other two men came, they started to be suspicious of us. Each of the two had such a bag near the border, so they probably were some kind of smugglers. A policeman said: ‘Stop!’ to these two men. The policemen spoke both Italian and German. One of the guys listened to the guard, but the other man ran to us, to the priest to explain everything. So one priest and the man who obeyed stayed there. We continued walking further to the forest and we waited what would happen. Later we saw some policemen coming in a lorry; they turned off the lights. Then they split and began to search for us; they walked and searched. We said to one another we would go through the pathway which led to houses. There they had big dogs and we decided to walk on railroad so that we could hear the train coming. We went to Vipiten, to Capuchins, following the railroad. So the three of us got to the Capuchins and the other two men to the police office. However, one of the priests tattled we came to Capuchins and subsequently we were detained. But it was at least a bit later, so we were able to get some sleep.”