The Traiskirchen camp for refugees was an old army barracks complex, fenced off with a guarded entrance. There were 3-story barracks buildings alongside the street and inside the complex there were other single-story houses. We were taken under guard to the 3rd floor of one of the barracks buildings. The majority of the people who had been interrogated with me in Vienna were placed in the first half of the 3rd floor. Myself and a couple of other new arrivals were taken to the second half, which was isolated from the first half under lock and key. I was assigned a cot in one room and there was a common bathroom for our half of the floor.

There were only males in our section, mostly Yugoslavians and a small mixture of other nationalities from Communist countries — Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania. Women were on the free campus, housed separately in the single-story houses. Sometimes women who had husbands with us came outside and stood under the windows and talked to them. That was how we slowly got information about life in the camp and the process we would go through. The guards brought us food 3 times a day and there were no guards with us otherwise.

I stayed in that isolated section for around 10 days. During that first week I had to remove the 3 stitches from my pulled tooth myself. Now thinking back on it, it was not easy and it was hurting, and I no longer remember what I used to cut and pull them.

After about 10 days, guards took us by bus back to Vienna for interrogation. When we came back, we were moved into the first half of the 3rd floor, where we spent another roughly 10 days waiting for papers. There was a separate recreation room with a TV and there were guards 24 hours a day. They took us 3 times a day to the dining room on the first floor for meals. After 10PM until 6AM we had to stay in our bedrooms and no one was allowed to leave. One time one Hungarian had to use the bathroom; he left the room and came back with a bloody nose. The guards were not fooling around.

Maybe every other day, 5 guards would enter the bedroom — one would go and stand at each window, one at the door, and one in the middle of the room would call out names. After each name, a guard would take the man out and we never saw him again. It turned out that all of them were young Yugoslavians who had come to Austria just for adventure and were being sent back.

After those 10 days I was released into the free camp. I was assigned a bedroom on the second floor and received breakfast, lunch, and dinner coupons for the camp dining room. I also received a political asylum card. Most people did not receive political asylum — they got economic asylum, which meant a one year permit to stay and work in Austria, within which time they had to emigrate somewhere else. Political asylum meant I could stay in Austria indefinitely.

The first thing I did after getting my papers was go to the post office and write a letter to my mother telling her I was safe and was not coming back. I made sure it was clear in the letter that she and my sister had no idea about my intentions, since all letters from Western countries were read by the secret police and I did not want them to have any trouble because of me. I also asked her to get the borrowed suitcase and suit from the CEDOK office and return them to the tram driver, Mr. Belik, who had been kind enough to lend them to me. After I left, the apartment in Vinohrady where we had lived was too big for just 2 people. In Czechoslovakia, you were allowed only a certain number of square meters of living space per person and anything over that was charged extra. So my mother and my sister exchanged the Vinohrady apartment for a smaller one in the newly built apartment buildings called Panelaky, in Prague Petriny.

In the camp, everyone was sharing their experiences and plans for the future. We became very familiar with the Geneva Convention rules for refugees from Communist countries. The main rule was that you had to apply for asylum in the first Western country you entered. Some people who came to Austria found out that life for refugees in Germany was better, so they went there, but they were returned back to Austria. For Czechoslovakians, help in the camp and with emigration was provided either by Charitas, which was a religious organization, or by AFCR. Once someone signed up with one, it was not easy to change. Charitas was generally considered better.

The only countries accepting refugees for emigration at that time were Canada, Australia, the USA, and South Africa. No Western European country would allow emigration of refugees from another Western country. Each of the 4 had restrictions — mainly age limits of around 40 or 45 years old, and certain profession requirements. Canada was the easiest to get into and provided 3 months of language courses and living accommodations. Australia was considered the best, with longer accommodations — I forgot if it was up to 1 or 2 years — though you had to work on government projects if you took advantage of it. The USA had no government help whatsoever. South Africa was very good but very selective about whom they would accept.

As people from the camp emigrated, they wrote back about their experiences and those letters swayed everyone’s plans. A letter would arrive from someone in Canada about what a great job he had and how well he was doing, and everyone in the camp would sign up to emigrate to Canada. Then a month later the same person would write that he had lost his job, could not find another one, and was moving to the other coast hoping for better luck, and the majority would switch their applications to Australia. Rumors moved everyone’s plans like a pendulum. I was insulated from this since I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

For some people, primarily the older ones who could not meet the age or profession requirements for any of the 4 countries, it was a very difficult time. Some of them were lucky enough to work with either AFCR or Charitas to get an exception from another Western European country like Sweden or Switzerland to accept them. Some younger people, mainly well-educated ones like dentists, got so discouraged realizing they would need to work in manual labor for who knows how long that they decided to return to their home country. They could do that without being punished, since the Communist government would use their return as propaganda about how difficult life was in Western countries.