At Anton Maruša's (right) café in Heerlen (sometime during the 1930s).

At the end of the shift, mineworkers would meet up at a café for a few drinks and a game of cards. The many cafés played an important part in the social life of mineworkers of all nationalities. A number of cafés across the mining area were owned by Slovenians, like ex-mineworker Anton Maruša's café in de Kampstraat in Heerlen. However, the café was also popular with Slovenian and Yugoslav communists before and after the war. Secret meetings were organised and, after the war, meetings at which officials of the Yugoslav embassy were present. It is probable that the repatriation of several hundred Slovenian mineworkers and their families was planned at Café Maruša. The café landlord, Anton Maruša, who organised this 'transportation' of 1947, travelled with the workers. He signed the café over to an in-law.