Selected text
At that time I was in high school. That day our class didn’t have school because of a so-called Principal’s Holiday. When I got wind of what had happened, I left town. My older brother Andrej was working on a farm in Velké Dvorany as an accountant.
I went to see him. Alone and with no money. On the way there, I stopped off in Topolcany at a sawmill, and there I asked one man who was a friend of my father’s for a hundred crowns for the trip. [In November 1945 the value of the crown in gold was set at 1 Kcs = 0.0178 g of gold.]
My mother stayed in town. My father went to visit a friend of his, also a man of similar age. Soldiers who had joined the pogrom came there for him, and took them away with them. They brought him, all bloodied, to the police station, where the town’s Russian commander had ordered all the Jews to be gathered. Someone had beaten him on the way there. They took him to the hospital for treatment. He was the oldest of the Jews that had been beaten.
Soldiers came to our home for my brother Rudo. They were brought there by our Aryanizer’s brother-in-law, Moravcik, who was helping his brother-in-law, our Aryanizer, at the store that had originally belonged to my father. The soldiers also took Rudo to the police station.
On the way there he was hit in the face so hard that he started bleeding. It happened in front of a store where the Aryanizer Korec was. During the war Korec was a well-known Guardist and participated in the rounding up of Jews.
I remember how he came for our neighbor, Ruzena Felseburgova, who they’d caught while she was attempting to cross the border into Hungary, to save herself from the transports. She’d gotten a half hour to pack her things, and Korec was ordering her to quickly finish.
In the evening, when Andrej and I returned home together, everything was over with, as gendarmes from Bratislava had arrived and restored order. Nothing happened to the people that had initiated the pogrom and took part in it, and demonstrably beat Jews.
They put them on trial, but let them go. At home we found our mother, who hadn’t dared to turn on the lights, because she didn’t know what things looked like outside and whether the pogrom wasn’t still continuing. She didn’t know anything about any of us, where we were, and was very glad when she saw my brother and me.
Then we went to the police station and there we met our father and my brother Rudo. Both of them had already gotten medical treatment. Then, accompanied by a Bratislava gendarme, we all went home.
I went to see him. Alone and with no money. On the way there, I stopped off in Topolcany at a sawmill, and there I asked one man who was a friend of my father’s for a hundred crowns for the trip. [In November 1945 the value of the crown in gold was set at 1 Kcs = 0.0178 g of gold.]
My mother stayed in town. My father went to visit a friend of his, also a man of similar age. Soldiers who had joined the pogrom came there for him, and took them away with them. They brought him, all bloodied, to the police station, where the town’s Russian commander had ordered all the Jews to be gathered. Someone had beaten him on the way there. They took him to the hospital for treatment. He was the oldest of the Jews that had been beaten.
Soldiers came to our home for my brother Rudo. They were brought there by our Aryanizer’s brother-in-law, Moravcik, who was helping his brother-in-law, our Aryanizer, at the store that had originally belonged to my father. The soldiers also took Rudo to the police station.
On the way there he was hit in the face so hard that he started bleeding. It happened in front of a store where the Aryanizer Korec was. During the war Korec was a well-known Guardist and participated in the rounding up of Jews.
I remember how he came for our neighbor, Ruzena Felseburgova, who they’d caught while she was attempting to cross the border into Hungary, to save herself from the transports. She’d gotten a half hour to pack her things, and Korec was ordering her to quickly finish.
In the evening, when Andrej and I returned home together, everything was over with, as gendarmes from Bratislava had arrived and restored order. Nothing happened to the people that had initiated the pogrom and took part in it, and demonstrably beat Jews.
They put them on trial, but let them go. At home we found our mother, who hadn’t dared to turn on the lights, because she didn’t know what things looked like outside and whether the pogrom wasn’t still continuing. She didn’t know anything about any of us, where we were, and was very glad when she saw my brother and me.
Then we went to the police station and there we met our father and my brother Rudo. Both of them had already gotten medical treatment. Then, accompanied by a Bratislava gendarme, we all went home.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ruzena R.