Since I was little I loved to listen my Grandma's passionate stories about those times long time ago, about the Great war, her father and his mill, his father, my Grandma's brothers and sisters. When at college I tried to write down on paper all the distant relatives, but soon lost as the families used to be so big.
Then sometime in 1999 I learnt about genealogy databases and that gave me a new start, a start to more organised and methodical research. Since then I spent all my vacations in archives, parishes or just travelling around Czech Republic and looking for new distant relatives. I have met many interesting and nice people, went to places I had never heard about before and heard exciting stories about relatives long since gone.
In summer 2000, the first version of these pages was born. It had a tremendous response and I soon started receiving e-mails from Slajs' and other related families in various parts of the world, mainly Czech Republic, Slovakia, the United States and Switzerland. More and more incredible stories keeps coming in and I read them with no less excitement then my Grandma's stories.
Today this site is a compilation of work of many people, who have invested time to their family research and shared their knowledge with me. I could have never done this on my own and would therefore like to express my gratitude to at least few of them - Mr. Karel Slajs, Mrs. Marie Jezkova, Mrs. Klara Slajsova, Mrs Ivana Skopkova from Czech Republic, Mrs. Nadezhda N. Mekhrengina from Russia, Mr. Sepp Schleiss from Switzerland, Mr. Jerry Lewis from Arizona, Mr. John and Nancy Slais from Connecticut, Mrs. Deborah Brown from Connecticut and Mrs. Linda Clubb from California.
Please let me know if you are also researching or are connected to a branch of this family. Drop me an e-mail on any comments, complaints or broken links.
Thank you,
Josef Slajs
London, November 28th, 2003
