German journalist Katrin Litschko. (source: Courtesy of K. L. )
Filled with curiosity and wishing she was anywhere except at home in Germany, Katrin Litschko couldn’t wait for the moment she could pack her suitcase and experience life abroad. After doing some thinking, she had an idea.
In the noughties, the art education university student set off to explore the homeland of her grandfather Josef: Slovakia. Once a resident of Nová Lehota – Neuhau in German – near Handlová, he was one of more than 30,000 Carpathian Germans who were expelled from the territory of Slovakia following the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Before the war ended, an estimated 100,000 Carpathian Germans had left Slovakia.
