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We stayed with the Vrabec family in Patronka for one night. Then we had to leave. In the city, across from the Manderlak: [Manderlak or Manderla Tower: considered to be the first so-called skyscraper in Bratislava, and in Slovakia. It was built in 1935 according to the designs of Rudolf Manderla, after whom it is named. It has 11 floors and for a long time was the tallest residential building in Bratislava – Editor’s note] there was a cinema. We hid in this cinema's furnace room for four nights. My mother slept on a stool, and my brother and I on the ground. We had to leave there as well, because the person who was hiding us there was changing shifts with someone else, and was afraid that his colleague would turn us in. He arranged us another hiding place in an apartment. It was this relay. My mother had some money, and that's what we paid with. We hid out for another few nights in that apartment. Once I heard some yelling in the street. I looked out the window, and a horrible scene played out in front of me. The Guardists and Germans were chasing someone, and then they shot him on the sidewalk under our windows. We had to leave that apartment as well. We moved to Vinohrady [Vineyards] by Bratislava. There we lived in a shed where they stored shovels and other tools for people that worked in the vineyards.
A family by the name of Vasut lived on Moyzesova St. in Zilina along with us. They had two daughters who had just graduated from high school. The older one was named Olga. She was 19. She came to see us in Bratislava and took my brother and I to an orphanage in Trnava. There some nuns took care of us. Our mother remained in Bratislava. As we later found out, she'd found a sublet and was looking for work using false papers. But someone reported her and she ended up in the Spandau work camp near Berlin [Spandau: the westernmost part of Berlin. During 1944 – 45, thousands of women at the camp in Spandau did forced labor for the German company Deutschen Industrie-Werke AG. The camp was liberated by the Soviet Army on 24 April 1945 – Editor's note]. From there they took her to Ravensbruck [11], where she was until liberation.
A family by the name of Vasut lived on Moyzesova St. in Zilina along with us. They had two daughters who had just graduated from high school. The older one was named Olga. She was 19. She came to see us in Bratislava and took my brother and I to an orphanage in Trnava. There some nuns took care of us. Our mother remained in Bratislava. As we later found out, she'd found a sublet and was looking for work using false papers. But someone reported her and she ended up in the Spandau work camp near Berlin [Spandau: the westernmost part of Berlin. During 1944 – 45, thousands of women at the camp in Spandau did forced labor for the German company Deutschen Industrie-Werke AG. The camp was liberated by the Soviet Army on 24 April 1945 – Editor's note]. From there they took her to Ravensbruck [11], where she was until liberation.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Jan Hanak