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Regarding the political climate in the pre-war years, the town was politically divided into a significant portion of the inhabitants that consisted of proletarians, and that part was oriented to the left. So there was a relatively strong Communist party. So strong as to have a deputy mayor on the town council, if I'm not mistaken one of them was named Kobida and another Cervenan. Then there were bourgeois parties, republicans and mainly Hlinka's People's Party [6], which always nominated the mayor. I remember that one of these mayors was at one time Mr. Ziak, a watchmaker, who was so tolerant that he would always come to synagogue for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. He had a place of honor in the first row. And he was a member of Hlinka's People's Party. But as I've said, most of the population was oriented to the left.
I remember one May Day demonstration in 1925. I was six years old at the time. My brother was walking at the head of the procession with a red flag. And I in shorts and bare feet, holding on to his pants, and at that time a conflict occurred. The gendarmes were shooting, luckily only into the air and they didn't injure anyone, but even so things were pretty tense. In Topolcany there was also a Jewish Zionist party, a religiously oriented Jewish party and a business-oriented Jewish party.
I remember one May Day demonstration in 1925. I was six years old at the time. My brother was walking at the head of the procession with a red flag. And I in shorts and bare feet, holding on to his pants, and at that time a conflict occurred. The gendarmes were shooting, luckily only into the air and they didn't injure anyone, but even so things were pretty tense. In Topolcany there was also a Jewish Zionist party, a religiously oriented Jewish party and a business-oriented Jewish party.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Alexander Bachnar