The author of Refugee Memoirs took on to emigrate out of the comfort of his family home and native country, Poland, as a teenager, not knowing perhaps, the full, life-changing implications laying ahead.
Adventure and the unknown were the real drivers, under the mask of a ‘political refugee’, as was the requirement to qualify for the status and the protection, under the Geneva Refugee Convention in ‘The West’.
There were tens of thousands of refugees in the camps of Vienna, Austria and elsewhere, like in West Germany, Sweden and Britain at the time, about a year or so before the Berlin Wall fell.
The transition from a relatively wealthy lifestyle to the barren lager (Traiskirchen and Götzendorf, where the old army barracks were made available to accommodate the masses) and queuing for meals supplied was intimidating, humbling and sobering, especially for a young, city teen.