TO FREEDOM

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 36, 1 April 1942, Page 3

TO FREEDOM

CZECH CHIMNEY SWEEP CROSSING THREE FRONTIERS Tonda is a se,ldier in a motorised unit of the Czechoslovak army in England who defied customs officers and gendarmes by crossing three frontiers without a passport. Tonda was a chimney sweep. One day, seeing that there were already too many German soldiers in his country, he picked out three of them in the inn, too helpless as a result of the good Czech beer, and beat them over the head with a coal rake. When he came out into the fresh air he realised that he must get away— before it was too late. So, Tonda set out on his journey, just as he was, without money and dirty with soot. He took his sweep's brush on one shoulder, a ladder on the other and went off across the Slovak frontier, and then right across Hungary towards Yugoslavia, which was still neutral. He lived like a Journeyman in the Middle Ages,— calling on skilled sweeps. No one gave him 'work but a night's lodging and some food. He did not avoid, but smiled at the gendarmes, who, according to Central European custom —wished him good luck. The Hungarians gendarmes were not in the least surprised that he did not know Hun-i garian. After Munich so many Slovaks were compelled to become Hungarian citizens. He was always going to work at the next village. The Yugoslav-Hungarian frontiers were well protected by a network of alarms and in the darkness Tonda blundered on to them. The alarm started ringing, the Hungarian frontier guards caught Tonda and sent him to Budapest where he spent inf;ny months in a terrible prison. But Tonda kept saying that he was really a Yugoslav. So finally the Hungarians deported him to the frontier. The Yugoslav fellow-sweeps took care of him and sent him to the Czechoslovak army.