Alois Klepáček

"When I was born in 1951, my grandfather had a shop in Svatá Helena and his father-in-law was a blacksmith. They had a shop, they had everything. And as in Russia they used to send people to Siberia, so they were sent to Bărăgan. They were there for four and a half years. It was only in 1955 that they returned from there. They were taken from their home, and at night the policemen came and said that in two hours they had to be packed up and gone. What you take on your horse wagon, that's what you're entitled to. They took them to Bărăgan, hammered in four pegs and said, 'That's yours, take care'."

"You see, my understanding was that Austria-Hungary was then like the European Union is today. People travelled to get work. My grandfather used to say that whoever had his own field back then was much better off than if he worked as a servant somewhere. They went for work." - "Did they say anything about what conditions were like when they came from Bohemia? What was Bohemia like then and what was the Banat like?" - "They were taken to Banat to work in the forest. First they came there without a wife and without children, they made a kind of dugout shelter, and the wife and children didn't come until six months later. They did everything by hand, cutting wood and working with it."