I was as if in a fever. All the time I was thinking: ‘My God, so I’ll never return to this place. How is this possible?’ There were so many things to deal with that there was absolutely no time to think. Today, I still don’t understand why I didn’t say goodbye to my neighbours. I still don’t understand how that happened. It was all like in a dream.

You could take five dollars with you – that was the allowed amount. We ordered a box, and, principally, we took all books. I thought that there was no life without books. All books related with work and various books from my childhood. Apart from that, we took some pots, bedclothes, some clothes and that was all. It was allowed to take furniture but who would think about furniture? We went to Warsaw. It all had to be dealt with through the Dutch embassy. After all we had no money to pay for the journey or for anything else. I guess the Dutch embassy paid for it and got us all the documents. In Warsaw we stayed for a few hours at our friends’ and then we got on a train and went to Vienna.

(Source: March ‘68 – memories of Lublin emigrants)