Pavla Severova's death certificate

This is a picture of the death certificate of my mother, Pavla Severova, married Silbersteinova, nee Löwyova. During the war, my mother and father hid with some people they knew. At one time before the war, my father had as a patient one Count Palffy, from a very well-known aristocratic family. The two of them had an agreement that if the Russians came, my father would hide Palffy and his family, and if on the other hand the Germans came to Slovakia, Palffy would hide our family. Palffy really did hide our father; in the beginning they also hid Grandma. Mother and Father were at Palffy's place for about three months, but he then decided to emigrate, packed up all his property, paintings and valuables, and left the country with his entire family. Then my mother and father hid somewhere else. When the Slovak National Uprising broke out in 1944, someone informed on Grandma and they transported her to a concentration camp. I don't know exactly where and with whom my parents lived during the war. After the war, I never discussed it with them. I myself didn't want to talk about what I'd lived through and seen in the concentration camp. I didn't have the least desire to return to those wartime experiences, and that's why I didn't talk to my parents about what they did during the war and how and where they lived, either. My parents survived the war in hiding. Of our family, only our parents, my sister and I survived. Otherwise all our other relatives died in concentration camps, except for my one great-great-uncle, Hexner, the economist who had emigrated to America. My mother died in 1947 of a heart attack.