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At first I attended a school called sirotar in Zilina. After the war, because I had been in hiding for a year and hadn’t attended school, I had to write make-up exams so I could start attending public school. After the end of public school I started attending the Girls’ Gymnazium [high school] in Zilina. I was in precisely the grade where they were making various changes and were trying to form a unified school system. By the time I graduated, I hadn’t absolved eight years of high school, but eleven. Among my favorite subjects were biology and geography. I didn’t like math and physics at all. My favorite teacher was our home room teacher. Now, in the fall [2004] we had a 50-year high school reunion, and I met him there. To this day I keep in touch with my former classmates from Zilina. Besides school I attended piano lessons for seven years. Today I don’t play any more, and I don’t know if I’d be able to play anything either. We studied German in school, which I looked forward to very much, as from home I spoke it only conversationally, while in school we improved not only our conversational skills, but also grammar. In my free time I took French lessons.
I can’t judge whether I felt any anti-Semitism in the prewar period. After 1945 there might have been some moments in school, but all in all, nothing. I didn’t feel it. I can say the same about at work. During socialism, people somehow didn’t show their anti-Semitic feelings. I would say that I meet up with it more nowadays. There are various things, like written slogans and vandalized cemeteries. We hear about it in the news, but also from our friends in Kosice, and from Presov, where they spray-painted their houses with anti-Semitic slogans.
I didn’t go to university, as I got married right after I graduated from high school. I always say that if I had to live it over again, I wouldn’t get married so early. Not because of my husband, but because your youth is gone; I got married at the age of 18. I wanted to study medicine, but as a former capitalist my father had a very bad political profile, so I also didn’t get a profile that was good enough. My entry interview was in Kosice. I could feel that due to my origins they didn’t even want to let me go on to the oral portion of the exam. I was inclined towards medicine, so that’s why I took a job in a laboratory here in Presov. I had to study nursing in another city so that I would have at least some sort of qualification. There was no school of medicine in Presov, and so I used to commute to Kosice. When my children were grown up, I finished one additional degree in my field. I’ll always regret that I didn’t go study at the Faculty of Philosophy or Pedagogy in Presov. I could have chosen a combination of language and biology, in that time I did three high school degrees. I could have also finished university.
I can’t judge whether I felt any anti-Semitism in the prewar period. After 1945 there might have been some moments in school, but all in all, nothing. I didn’t feel it. I can say the same about at work. During socialism, people somehow didn’t show their anti-Semitic feelings. I would say that I meet up with it more nowadays. There are various things, like written slogans and vandalized cemeteries. We hear about it in the news, but also from our friends in Kosice, and from Presov, where they spray-painted their houses with anti-Semitic slogans.
I didn’t go to university, as I got married right after I graduated from high school. I always say that if I had to live it over again, I wouldn’t get married so early. Not because of my husband, but because your youth is gone; I got married at the age of 18. I wanted to study medicine, but as a former capitalist my father had a very bad political profile, so I also didn’t get a profile that was good enough. My entry interview was in Kosice. I could feel that due to my origins they didn’t even want to let me go on to the oral portion of the exam. I was inclined towards medicine, so that’s why I took a job in a laboratory here in Presov. I had to study nursing in another city so that I would have at least some sort of qualification. There was no school of medicine in Presov, and so I used to commute to Kosice. When my children were grown up, I finished one additional degree in my field. I’ll always regret that I didn’t go study at the Faculty of Philosophy or Pedagogy in Presov. I could have chosen a combination of language and biology, in that time I did three high school degrees. I could have also finished university.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Judita Schvalbova