Vojtech Zeman

“We weren’t allowed to look through the windows. When we entered the monastery, we had only few things with us. Those policemen had Kalashnikovs, but there were also some non-communists among them. They neither knew where they were going. When we came in, we stood in two rows and their boss started to scream at us as if he was obsessed by devil, and he used such words as being used in jail. We actually didn’t even understand him quite well. We weren’t allowed to look through the windows, or to get closer to a wall. There lived Redemptorists; there was a monastery and that’s why there was such a wall. It was ideal for them. They didn’t have too much work; they only cleaned and did the housework, where it was needed. So we studied there, of course, us – the Salesians.”

“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.”