Things Nearly Started To Get Better – an exhibition

About the exhibition: "Gradually things were getting better.
Expellees talk about their forced departure, their arrival and life in a new country."

When they were expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945 they were still children. Today, after nearly 70 years, they are looking back and recalling their experiences: about arriving in Austria and asking and begging for food, searching for a roof over their heads. They talk about the fear of being expelled again, about their parents’ painful process of settling into a new environment, about their first days at school, their sorrows and longings. They remember the help they received, as well as the rejection they experienced in a new country which for many never really became a true home.

The travelling exhibition has been realised by the Centre for Migration Studies in St. Pölten (Zentrum für Migrationsforschung, ZMF), a project commissioned by the Provincial Archive (Niederösterreichisches Landesarchiv). The exhibition is based on 30 interviews with contemporary witnesses, which were gathered in the years 2012 and 2013. The exhibition in Brno takes place in cooperation with the project “Rok smíření / Jahr der Versöhnung“ and its coordinator, The touristic information center of the city of Brno.