Selected text
My father pulled 2,000 crowns out of his briefcase. [The value of one Slovak crown during the Slovak State – 1939-1945 was equal to 31.21 mg of pure gold. The rate of exchange between the German mark and the Slovak crown was artificially set at 1:11.]
Later that came back to haunt me, because after the war, during the Slansky affair [27], they expelled me from technical university. My cadre profile for that purpose had been sent from Topolcany. It was written by the same Dobrovodsky, who’d become a city clerk when they dissolved the city police force.
He wrote that besides other things my father had two apartment buildings, and that he was a big capitalist. Meanwhile, the other building wasn’t my father’s. Once I met Dobrovodsky in Topolcany, and I remember my conversation with him:
‘Mr. Dobrovodsky, what was it that you wrote about my father having two buildings?’
‘On the main square, this and this building,’ and he pointed to two neighboring buildings, of which only one was really ours.
‘But that other building is Polak’s!’
‘Oops, so I was wrong.’ That’s what people were like. The cadre material that he’d put together followed me all the way to retirement. All my life I had problems based on this material, and they de facto persecuted me because of it, or for my being Jewish.
So on 13th July 1942 we left Topolcany for Dolné Otrokovce. At home I’ve got a copy of the request that my father wrote so that they’d allow us to go away – Jews were forbidden to leave the town where they were registered with the police. This application had, according to regulations, a six-pointed star in the upper corner and the designation ‘in the matter of a Jew.’ Our entire family left: my parents, my two brothers and I. My uncle Béla lived there, with his wife and children, Zolo and Marta. He farmed on a farm he’d inherited from my grandfather. We moved in with him. It’s only now that I understand properly how it got on his nerves when one day a family of five arrived. Especially his wife didn’t like it. She was very religious, and at that time I’d had myself baptized. It was especially I that stuck in her craw. It even went so far that she stopped talking to me. She also caused me other unpleasantries. I guess we mutually very much got on each other’s nerves. But in that situation none of us knew what to do.
In Dolné Otrokovce I was allowed to attend a state school, because I’d been baptized. The standard [of education] that I’d come with from the Topolcany Jewish school far outstripped the standards of that two-room village school.
So I had several privileges. For example, when the teacher was teaching, he’d sit me behind his desk and gave me my classmates’ exercise books to correct. I, of course, had straight A’s. Even though I didn’t deserve the one for drawing.
The people living in this village were without exception decent people with a humane attitude towards Jews as well. After the atmosphere and experiences of anti-Semitic Topolcany, it was a big relief. Only once did it happen to me that one kid at school started yelling at me and cursing me that I was a Jew. He was smaller than I was, so the way I resolved it was that I beat him up.
Later that came back to haunt me, because after the war, during the Slansky affair [27], they expelled me from technical university. My cadre profile for that purpose had been sent from Topolcany. It was written by the same Dobrovodsky, who’d become a city clerk when they dissolved the city police force.
He wrote that besides other things my father had two apartment buildings, and that he was a big capitalist. Meanwhile, the other building wasn’t my father’s. Once I met Dobrovodsky in Topolcany, and I remember my conversation with him:
‘Mr. Dobrovodsky, what was it that you wrote about my father having two buildings?’
‘On the main square, this and this building,’ and he pointed to two neighboring buildings, of which only one was really ours.
‘But that other building is Polak’s!’
‘Oops, so I was wrong.’ That’s what people were like. The cadre material that he’d put together followed me all the way to retirement. All my life I had problems based on this material, and they de facto persecuted me because of it, or for my being Jewish.
So on 13th July 1942 we left Topolcany for Dolné Otrokovce. At home I’ve got a copy of the request that my father wrote so that they’d allow us to go away – Jews were forbidden to leave the town where they were registered with the police. This application had, according to regulations, a six-pointed star in the upper corner and the designation ‘in the matter of a Jew.’ Our entire family left: my parents, my two brothers and I. My uncle Béla lived there, with his wife and children, Zolo and Marta. He farmed on a farm he’d inherited from my grandfather. We moved in with him. It’s only now that I understand properly how it got on his nerves when one day a family of five arrived. Especially his wife didn’t like it. She was very religious, and at that time I’d had myself baptized. It was especially I that stuck in her craw. It even went so far that she stopped talking to me. She also caused me other unpleasantries. I guess we mutually very much got on each other’s nerves. But in that situation none of us knew what to do.
In Dolné Otrokovce I was allowed to attend a state school, because I’d been baptized. The standard [of education] that I’d come with from the Topolcany Jewish school far outstripped the standards of that two-room village school.
So I had several privileges. For example, when the teacher was teaching, he’d sit me behind his desk and gave me my classmates’ exercise books to correct. I, of course, had straight A’s. Even though I didn’t deserve the one for drawing.
The people living in this village were without exception decent people with a humane attitude towards Jews as well. After the atmosphere and experiences of anti-Semitic Topolcany, it was a big relief. Only once did it happen to me that one kid at school started yelling at me and cursing me that I was a Jew. He was smaller than I was, so the way I resolved it was that I beat him up.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ruzena R.