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My father had been transported to Sachsenhausen [15]. From there they assigned him to some neighboring camp, from where he and a few fellow prisoners managed to escape. They crossed the border of the Protectorate east of the town of Jachymov. There were about ten other miners with them, led by the Party head Ondrej Tatar. They were quite scattered, because some of them were in better condition, and some in worse. They'd been working together in some mine by Sachsenhausen. It was actually some sort of war industry, where part of the production was inside a mountain. The miners were tasked with enlarging the space for the arms factory. The entrance to the complex led across a bridge that spanned some water. Each day they walked three kilometers to the mine, and three back to the camp. My father worked there in an electrical workshop with some Frenchmen. When the miners were getting ready to leave, my father joined them along with one doctor. The doctor's name was Dr. Soltes. After the war he became the health care commissioner in Slovakia [The Health Care Commission: a specialized institution equivalent to the Ministry of Health – Editor's note]. When they were trying to get across the German-Czech border, my father climbed a tree. He wanted to find out if there wasn't anyone around. Suddenly a machine gun started firing, and wounded his arm in several places. After a few days he developed high fevers, so they had to look for help. They got him to the town of Dolni Bela, where Dr. Boris Jacenko treated him. He was an immigrant that was working in the town as a doctor. He operated on my father. He had another two people that he was hiding at his place, and so they decided that they'd try to take a car across the front to the Americans. Finally they also succeeded. Until the end of the war, my father worked for the American army as an interpreter. He wore a uniform, and made it all the way to Prague. There he worked for some time at the repatriation office. From there he then returned to Piestany. In Piestany he ran into my cousin Lulo, and together they threw the people out of our apartment. He came there and said: "Leave here, I'll be moving in here in two hours. It's my property." Lulo was helping them carry things out. When we came home, the apartment once again belonged to our family. We kept in touch with Dr. Jacenko after the war too. When I was attending university, I visited him often.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ladislav Urban