A report written in 1966 by John Grundy

A 14 year-old Ukrainian boy born in a D.P. camp at Trieste and now living alone with his elderly father in Salzburg, able to speak six languages but prevented from meeting anyone his own age; four brothers from a family of six, the father in a mental asylum and mother desperately trying to support them; two Hungarian brothers whose mother is a prostitute and whose gypsy blood makes it difficult for them to settle in a city, still less a city where a foreign language is spoken and where they have no roots.  These were some of the children who were selected for this year’s second Austrian camp. 

It is worthwhile restating our aims in taking 28 refugee children for a three-week holiday in the mountains.  We do not aim to solve problems – in three weeks you can only begin to glimpse the complex emotional and psychological forces which affect children uprooted from the ingrained traditions of Hungarian life.  We have two simple aims: to give the children as enjoyable a holiday as possible in surroundings they would never otherwise see, and briefly to relieve the strain on poor and over-burdened parents.

After the team – eight men from Cambridge and two girls, one each from Exeter and Hull Universities – had had two days to settle into the campsite, the children were fetched from Vienna and Salzburg.  They arrived late at night in our two vans and were hurried to bed after a quick meal and a check on their luggage.  Those members of the team who had been on the previous year’s camp were pleased to see some familiar faces.

The next morning the children awoke early to scout out the ground, for even the old hands were in new surroundings, a mile further up the valley than the previous year.  They found that the camp was centred on an ‘Almhütte’, a mountain pasture hut that provided wet-weather sleeping accommodation and a large cowstall that was used as a dining-room and play-room.  There was also a kitchen with an excellent wood-stove and a vast copper in which dirty laundry could be boiled.  Running water came in a pipe from the fast-flowing mountain stream.  Behind the hut the wooded slopes rose steeply towards the mountains.  A wood shed and haybarn completed the buildings, which on one side were bordered by a hayfield, out of bounds until after the harvest, and on the other by a meadow leading down to the river.  A wooden bridge crossed the river to a large field in which the tents where the children slept were situated.  The deep valley led up to views of the snow-capped Tauern mountains to the north and the more gentle slopes descending to the Lungau in the south.

A typical day began with the more energetic children rousing the lazy Onkels, the first of whom to surface set about clearing the ashes from the fire, lighting a new one, a task which involved singularly good exercise for the lungs, and waking a driver to fetch the milk.  Breakfast consisted of bread and jam followed by hot chocolate, with a variety of cereals or cold oats which, with milk and sugar, were very popular.  After breakfast a time would be announced for the inspection of tents and, without a fixed rota having to be evolved, the various camp jobs such as washing up, burning the rubbish, sweeping the barns, chopping wood and cleaning the lavatories always seemed to get done.  Many of the children were willing to help with these tasks every day and although others preferred to play football we ensured that at some stage everyone had a turn at least at washing up.  The morning was usually spent around the camp, football always being the favourite pastime, while on most mornings it was necessary to send a small shopping foray to the nearest town, Mariapfarr.  Lunch, rolls filled with salami or fish or jam with a fruit drink and fresh fruit to follow, was usually taken outside on the rocks, at a polite distance from the inevitable sleeping bags which needed drying.  Afternoon activities were largely dependent on the weather, which, considering we were but eight miles from the ‘sonnenreichste Stadt Österreichs’, was well below standard.  Trips to the Mariapfarr swimming pool were popular, long mountain walks in theory less so, but obviously enormously enjoyed once in progress.  The evening meal, taken seated at tables in the hut, always had at least one hot course, with soup before or a hot drink after, and fruit and chocolate all round.  The cooking was generally appreciated by all, and even if the children were made ravenously hungry by the altitude, they did confess in their more confiding moments that they considered themselves well fed.  The evening was often rounded off with songs, ‘Beat-les’ being favourites by far, and the team member who sings in his college choir set a fine example with the tonal quality of his German Lieder.

After the first week the children were split into two rough age groups and turns were taken to spend a week in small camps of seven further down the valley.  This enabled us to get to know individual children much better so that they all got more personal attention, and also broadened the scope of our activities: the river was dammed to form a swimming pool, an assault course was built, races were held over the rapids in lilos, and of course there was always the inevitable football.  One 12-year-old boy organised, quite without prompting from us, a ‘Zirkus’, in which he himself performed some brilliant Chaplin-style burlesque and was supported by others in song, dance and mime routines.

We were gratified to receive many visitors on the camp: friends from our sister camp in Germany, a member from previous years who, with a friend, came for two days and stayed to help for ten, and above all our sponsors from C.R.I., the parent body, without whose help, encouragement and organisation we should never have left England.  To them and to all who helped us financially or with goods we are, as always, deeply grateful.

The weather in our last five days fully compensated for the rain we had suffered before.  In brilliant sunshine we were able to bask all day by the river and the children had not even enough energy for football.  During these days small groups of the larger boys were taken on two-day walks in the mountains.  The first two groups were dogged by mist and fog, but the last group had magnificent views from the 9000-foot peak they conquered.  The boys proved to be excellent walkers and enjoyed the night spent at a high alpine hut in company with other tourist walkers.  On the final evening an enormous camp fire was built and the camp rounded off in traditional style.

This outline of some of our outstanding activities does not seek to cover the fact that all was not trouble-free.  There was inevitably some bullying and bickering amongst the children, and we discovered one or two instances of petty pilfering from the shops.  The last day was marred by the stealing of a substantial sum of money from the Onkels; the culprits were soon run to ground and we were quite surprised to find quite a wide network for the distribution of the cash operating among the elder boys.  We reported the case to the social workers responsible for those particular children.  We were not unduly surprised by the theft, for children from disrupted and often criminal backgrounds are obviously more open to the temptations which inevitably arise in a sprawling camp.  However, we do not attempt to reform children to whom pilfering is a way of life, but we hope that three weeks in an atmosphere where it is not the basis of survival may help the children to see it in a new light.

Certainly the change which can be noted in some of the children makes our activities seem infinitely worthwhile.  It is not a change from bad to good, or even from bad to better.  It is a change in attitudes to other people and to natural surroundings.  Many of the boys are exuberant when they arrive and stay that way; others have less obvious joie de vivre and do not apparently change.  But a minority come to the camp silent and introspective, to end up playing a leading part in every game of football and filling your every minute with a stream of chatter.  Perhaps it is the memory of their faces wreathed in smiles that makes so many team members eager to return to another year’s camp.