Selected text
The management of the North Slovak Power Company for whom our father worked behaved very respectably towards us. They emptied an office on the top floor of the power station building and made it into an apartment for us. We got only the bare necessities, but nevertheless we had a place to live. We had a roof over our heads. Back then the general manager was Mr. Reich. He wasn't a Jew. His son Frantisek Reich competed on the Czechoslovak rowing team at the 1948 Olympics in London. Later the power company built three residential buildings on Stefanikova Street in Zilina. They then allocated us an apartment in one of them. So our father got his job back right away. At first our mother was at home. She'd graduated from Hungarian academic high school in Kosice. After the war she got a job in the school system. She did minor office work. After work she took part-time business courses, so she then got a better job at the Regional Union Council in Zilina.
I'd like to return to the prewar era and my later stay in Terezin, and the practice of religion. You know, at that age I didn't much understand religion as the worshipping of God. I liked Roman Catholic rites. Before the war I'd been an altar-boy. My friend Alino Trgo from Moyzeska St. got me involved in it. Alino was from a very devout family and was also an altar-boy. Once he asked me if I didn't want to try it. I said yes, and learned how to do it. To this day I can do almost the entire Mass in Latin. I know all the prayers. Here I can't but help make one remark. I misbehaved quite a bit in school. Back then teachers were allowed to use corporal punishment. Either they'd bend us over a desk and whip our behinds with a cane, or we'd get on our hands. Because I misbehaved a lot, I was punished a lot. But back then I said just wait, come Sunday you'll beg for forgiveness. On Sunday we'd all go to church from the school, along with the teachers. In the Roman Catholic rite when they perform the offertory and the changing of the blood of Christ into wine, the altar-boy rings a bell and everyone else in the church kneels. The priest raises the hosts and cup and people kneel. Before this, I would always look at all the teachers, especially the ones I'd gotten it from that week, and said to myself silently: "Now you'll beg for forgiveness." I'd ring the bell, and watch with delight as they'd kneel. I'd imagine that they weren't kneeling because of the offertory, but were begging for forgiveness for what they'd done to me.
I even served as an alter-boy in Terezin. There masses took place in a room. They weren't done by a priest, but by some very religious person. The way even a layman can give the last rites to a dying person in an emergency, so can he in an extreme situation lead services. They used me for Jewish services as well. I worked as a sort of shammash [shammash: translates as "attendant", and designates a paid general employee, especially one that takes care of overall maintenance of a synagogue – Editor's note]. My brother wasn't interested. He wasn't inclined towards religion. I was also fascinated by religious songs that were sung during they holidays. When the organ and singing started, I'd feel shivers run up and down my spine. The organ's sound was so powerful and the words of the songs so beautiful that it fascinated me. You know, it was amazing. I lived for it. I liked the service, and I liked the music. So I wanted to continue in it after the war as well. When I returned to the church in Zilina after the war, the sexton, Mr. Pozak, asked me: "Where in hell were you all year?!" I answered: "You guessed it, in hell." I also served during funerals and weddings. To this day I still meet people in the street whom I'd ministered to at weddings.
The entire time we were imprisoned I thought that it was one huge mistake. That I wasn't supposed to be there. It had nothing to do with me. That one day they'd find out and apologize and let us go. That our family will once again be together and will live like before. I lived in the hope, in the illusion, that it was all a mistake. I saw people dying of typhus, of hunger. Every little while a dead body would be carried out. Women and children went somewhere else than my brother and I. We were with the adult men in these barracks. All this convinced me that my prospects for the future weren't so bad...
At the end of the war our family decided to change its name. German names were too obvious to everyone [15]. From today's perspective, decades after the war, it's perhaps naive. But back then that psychosis, that anti-Semitism, that fear, drove you to eliminate everything that could endanger you in some way. Even things like a name change could appear as important. It was sometime around the end of 1945 or start of 1946. We were sitting down at supper, and thinking of a suitable surname. My mother for example suggested Horak, or various surnames that people we knew had. Then my brother and I noted that during the war we'd been in hiding at an orphanage in Trnava, where there'd been about fifteen of us to a room. Three of them had been terrible hoodlums. They ended up in a reform institution. Their names were Duris, Filo and Hanak. I recalled these names, and my brother said that we should be Hanak. So that's how we got our name.
I'd like to return to the prewar era and my later stay in Terezin, and the practice of religion. You know, at that age I didn't much understand religion as the worshipping of God. I liked Roman Catholic rites. Before the war I'd been an altar-boy. My friend Alino Trgo from Moyzeska St. got me involved in it. Alino was from a very devout family and was also an altar-boy. Once he asked me if I didn't want to try it. I said yes, and learned how to do it. To this day I can do almost the entire Mass in Latin. I know all the prayers. Here I can't but help make one remark. I misbehaved quite a bit in school. Back then teachers were allowed to use corporal punishment. Either they'd bend us over a desk and whip our behinds with a cane, or we'd get on our hands. Because I misbehaved a lot, I was punished a lot. But back then I said just wait, come Sunday you'll beg for forgiveness. On Sunday we'd all go to church from the school, along with the teachers. In the Roman Catholic rite when they perform the offertory and the changing of the blood of Christ into wine, the altar-boy rings a bell and everyone else in the church kneels. The priest raises the hosts and cup and people kneel. Before this, I would always look at all the teachers, especially the ones I'd gotten it from that week, and said to myself silently: "Now you'll beg for forgiveness." I'd ring the bell, and watch with delight as they'd kneel. I'd imagine that they weren't kneeling because of the offertory, but were begging for forgiveness for what they'd done to me.
I even served as an alter-boy in Terezin. There masses took place in a room. They weren't done by a priest, but by some very religious person. The way even a layman can give the last rites to a dying person in an emergency, so can he in an extreme situation lead services. They used me for Jewish services as well. I worked as a sort of shammash [shammash: translates as "attendant", and designates a paid general employee, especially one that takes care of overall maintenance of a synagogue – Editor's note]. My brother wasn't interested. He wasn't inclined towards religion. I was also fascinated by religious songs that were sung during they holidays. When the organ and singing started, I'd feel shivers run up and down my spine. The organ's sound was so powerful and the words of the songs so beautiful that it fascinated me. You know, it was amazing. I lived for it. I liked the service, and I liked the music. So I wanted to continue in it after the war as well. When I returned to the church in Zilina after the war, the sexton, Mr. Pozak, asked me: "Where in hell were you all year?!" I answered: "You guessed it, in hell." I also served during funerals and weddings. To this day I still meet people in the street whom I'd ministered to at weddings.
The entire time we were imprisoned I thought that it was one huge mistake. That I wasn't supposed to be there. It had nothing to do with me. That one day they'd find out and apologize and let us go. That our family will once again be together and will live like before. I lived in the hope, in the illusion, that it was all a mistake. I saw people dying of typhus, of hunger. Every little while a dead body would be carried out. Women and children went somewhere else than my brother and I. We were with the adult men in these barracks. All this convinced me that my prospects for the future weren't so bad...
At the end of the war our family decided to change its name. German names were too obvious to everyone [15]. From today's perspective, decades after the war, it's perhaps naive. But back then that psychosis, that anti-Semitism, that fear, drove you to eliminate everything that could endanger you in some way. Even things like a name change could appear as important. It was sometime around the end of 1945 or start of 1946. We were sitting down at supper, and thinking of a suitable surname. My mother for example suggested Horak, or various surnames that people we knew had. Then my brother and I noted that during the war we'd been in hiding at an orphanage in Trnava, where there'd been about fifteen of us to a room. Three of them had been terrible hoodlums. They ended up in a reform institution. Their names were Duris, Filo and Hanak. I recalled these names, and my brother said that we should be Hanak. So that's how we got our name.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Jan Hanak