Selected text
My mother even found our closets in one apartment. On the back of these closets, my father had written down the numbers of bankbooks he’d burned, as he hadn’t included them in the declaration of property in 1940, when Jews had to declare their property, so that they could gradually confiscate what they’d declared.
He had the same numbers scored into a little pillbox that he’d carried on him throughout the whole war. My mother entered that apartment with a policeman. They, of course, immediately began with what was this supposed to mean and so on. The policeman said: ‘Turn those closets around.’ The numbers of course matched, and so we got the closets back.
Things like this naturally fed the pogrom mood. This is also why in his speech on the radio Lettrich [29] asked Jews to not ask for their things back from people they found them with, because it was causing needless anti-Jewish sentiments. It was always typical to turn the victims into the guilty.
With his property and income, my father belonged to the upper middle class. After the war, nothing remained of his property. We returned home with only the clothes on our backs. After the war, I went around in a coat I had gotten from one aunt.
I had only one dress, and I didn’t get others until a few months after the war, from cloth sent by the UNRRA [The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]. From January 1946 I started tutoring classmates, and with that money I bought myself clothes, because my parents didn’t have money.
Our family’ composition wasn’t very well suited for emigration. My father was old, and he soon died, in 1948, and my brother Rudo and I were still snot-nosed kids, plus both of us wanted to study anyways.
Our brother Andrej did talk about how he would work to support the family, but we couldn’t expect that of him. We also made a few attempts, but they ended up in failure. We had a relative in the United States, whom my father had entrusted with a huge sum of money in case we needed it.
His wife came to visit us before the war, and took 400,000 crowns [in 1929 it was decreed by law that the Czechoslovak crown – Kc – as a unit of Czechoslovak currency was equal in value to 44.58 mg of gold] back with her to the USA, but after the war they returned almost nothing.
They just sent us some used clothing and around 20,000 crowns, and that was it. He was my mother’s cousin. During the war I was memorizing their address, and I knew that it was because we had lots of money there.
My father died in February 1948, and is buried in Topolcany, at the Jewish cemetery. My mother remained alone in Topolcany. My brother Rudo and I were studying in Bratislava, and Andrej was commuting to Piestany for work.
They wanted to throw my mother out of her apartment, saying that she was alone and didn’t need it. They didn’t want to recognize that all three of us siblings had our permanent address in Topolcany. Andrej went with me to the police station, they were the ones that wanted to throw my mother out, there he banged on the table and that helped. That’s how it was finally resolved.
He had the same numbers scored into a little pillbox that he’d carried on him throughout the whole war. My mother entered that apartment with a policeman. They, of course, immediately began with what was this supposed to mean and so on. The policeman said: ‘Turn those closets around.’ The numbers of course matched, and so we got the closets back.
Things like this naturally fed the pogrom mood. This is also why in his speech on the radio Lettrich [29] asked Jews to not ask for their things back from people they found them with, because it was causing needless anti-Jewish sentiments. It was always typical to turn the victims into the guilty.
With his property and income, my father belonged to the upper middle class. After the war, nothing remained of his property. We returned home with only the clothes on our backs. After the war, I went around in a coat I had gotten from one aunt.
I had only one dress, and I didn’t get others until a few months after the war, from cloth sent by the UNRRA [The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]. From January 1946 I started tutoring classmates, and with that money I bought myself clothes, because my parents didn’t have money.
Our family’ composition wasn’t very well suited for emigration. My father was old, and he soon died, in 1948, and my brother Rudo and I were still snot-nosed kids, plus both of us wanted to study anyways.
Our brother Andrej did talk about how he would work to support the family, but we couldn’t expect that of him. We also made a few attempts, but they ended up in failure. We had a relative in the United States, whom my father had entrusted with a huge sum of money in case we needed it.
His wife came to visit us before the war, and took 400,000 crowns [in 1929 it was decreed by law that the Czechoslovak crown – Kc – as a unit of Czechoslovak currency was equal in value to 44.58 mg of gold] back with her to the USA, but after the war they returned almost nothing.
They just sent us some used clothing and around 20,000 crowns, and that was it. He was my mother’s cousin. During the war I was memorizing their address, and I knew that it was because we had lots of money there.
My father died in February 1948, and is buried in Topolcany, at the Jewish cemetery. My mother remained alone in Topolcany. My brother Rudo and I were studying in Bratislava, and Andrej was commuting to Piestany for work.
They wanted to throw my mother out of her apartment, saying that she was alone and didn’t need it. They didn’t want to recognize that all three of us siblings had our permanent address in Topolcany. Andrej went with me to the police station, they were the ones that wanted to throw my mother out, there he banged on the table and that helped. That’s how it was finally resolved.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ruzena R.