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Right after the liberation I went to Banska Bystrica to study. Because I had been thrown out of school in Presov in ‘kvinta’ [fifth year], I did sexta and septima [sixth and seventh years] in Bystrica. I finished my education at university in Prague. I started my studies there in 1946, and finished in 1952. Right at that time, the Slansky trials [11] began, which also affected me. I think they must have affected everyone. Certainly it left a certain mark in every Jew. After all, there were rants of Slansky, that Jew, Zionist and so on. They knew about me too, that I was of Jewish descent. I didn’t announce it to everyone, but it was known. But there were also those that came to tell me that they didn’t agree with what was going on. No one knew, however, what was going to be. In the end they convicted 13 people, eleven of them to death. Almost all of them were Jews. It wasn’t a good period. Things eased around the year 1953, when Gottwald [Klement Gottwald (1896-1953): President of Czechoslovakia from 1948-1953] and then Stalin died. Then people started to talk about the beastly things that they had done.
I was also a member of the Communist Party [12]. I joined the Party in 1945-46 and left it in 1970. That is, I left it, but didn’t leave it. They got rid of me, I was thrown out. After the war, I joined because I was enthused by the idea of communism. When you read the statutes and program of the Party, it was very humane. There, they talked about rights, about responsibilities, that we are all equal, that there are no differences, and so on and so forth. There was a big pile of these things, so people that were arriving, and had been in the camps [concentration and work camps] and had been persecuted – to them it seemed to be sensible. Then, to top it off, there were additional anti-Jewish sentiments in Slovakia, for example pogroms against Jews in Topolcany. So I saw salvation in the Communists. The Communists were supposed to be people that would protect us, but the opposite happened. Already in 1948, when they won the elections, I noticed that it wasn’t going to be the way we had thought. I realized that the Communists were an organization that ‘preached water but drank wine.’ In the 1950s, that was only its culmination. So even back then it didn’t sit well with me.
After I finished my dentistry studies at Charles University in Prague, I got a job at a clinic in Kosice, on Rastislavova Street. There I did three post-graduate certificates, in periodontology. Basically it was my specialization. I worked as a dentist in Kosice for two years, and then moved to Presov. I worked as a dentist from 1952 to 1991, when I went into retirement. I liked my work very much. I devoted myself solely to dentistry, concretely periodontology. I wrote one paper that was accepted at a diabetology congress in Madrid. I worked on it with one colleague, but he wasn’t a dentist, but an internist. We concerned ourselves with the influence of saliva on the gums of diabetics. My friend whom I worked on it with left for America, and in 1989 came to see me, saying that I should go there with him. I told him that I didn’t want to go any more.
I was also a member of the Communist Party [12]. I joined the Party in 1945-46 and left it in 1970. That is, I left it, but didn’t leave it. They got rid of me, I was thrown out. After the war, I joined because I was enthused by the idea of communism. When you read the statutes and program of the Party, it was very humane. There, they talked about rights, about responsibilities, that we are all equal, that there are no differences, and so on and so forth. There was a big pile of these things, so people that were arriving, and had been in the camps [concentration and work camps] and had been persecuted – to them it seemed to be sensible. Then, to top it off, there were additional anti-Jewish sentiments in Slovakia, for example pogroms against Jews in Topolcany. So I saw salvation in the Communists. The Communists were supposed to be people that would protect us, but the opposite happened. Already in 1948, when they won the elections, I noticed that it wasn’t going to be the way we had thought. I realized that the Communists were an organization that ‘preached water but drank wine.’ In the 1950s, that was only its culmination. So even back then it didn’t sit well with me.
After I finished my dentistry studies at Charles University in Prague, I got a job at a clinic in Kosice, on Rastislavova Street. There I did three post-graduate certificates, in periodontology. Basically it was my specialization. I worked as a dentist in Kosice for two years, and then moved to Presov. I worked as a dentist from 1952 to 1991, when I went into retirement. I liked my work very much. I devoted myself solely to dentistry, concretely periodontology. I wrote one paper that was accepted at a diabetology congress in Madrid. I worked on it with one colleague, but he wasn’t a dentist, but an internist. We concerned ourselves with the influence of saliva on the gums of diabetics. My friend whom I worked on it with left for America, and in 1989 came to see me, saying that I should go there with him. I told him that I didn’t want to go any more.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Otto Schvalb
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