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The Americans and the Russians had fought together, they were friends. What’s this about special permission?! He left, and I said there to one of the ladies, ‘You know what, I’m going to escape. I’ve laid around up to now, I’m not willing to stay here.’
There was a wood plank, put out to the bank, I stepped on it, and one of the ladies yelled after me, ‘You’ll fall in the Danube!’ Well, I answered, ‘I can still swim.’ It was pouring with rain, and a guy was standing on the bank, leaning on the fence, watching me as I swayed on this board. I get over to him, but I couldn’t stand up, so he helped me.
That lady, whom I’d told I was leaving, she also came, he also helped her. I said, ‘Would you be so kind as to give me a koruna, I want to make a phone call.’ I didn’t know who was alive and who wasn’t. He smiled at that, ‘The telephone doesn’t work, but here’s some money’, and he gave me a hundred. The lady who came with me, yells, ‘Wow! We’re rich, we’re going to stay at the Carlton.’ Then it turned out that a kilo of strawberries, cost a hundred koruna.
We headed toward the city, and our rabbi at that time, Dr. Frieder was coming straight toward us, with two Jews. He sees we just got off the ship, with no hair, bald. He says, ‘The girls just came by ship, I’m getting the permit, the captain telephoned.
Everybody can get off here.’ ‘And where do we go, we don’t know because…’ ‘Go to the Jewish kitchen to eat.’ I said, ‘Where’s that?’ Well, it’s over here, where Chez David is today, the kitchen was there. We went there, opened the door, it was packed with men, everybody smoking, there was so much smoke that I could hardly see. But in the kitchen part, I saw a familiar older lady.
My mother had known her well; she had had a nice leather shop sometime in Bratislava. She was cooking. She saw us, and was really glad, she said, ‘Have a seat.’ We sat down, and she brought us a café au lait and kuglof [coffee cake]. We thought we were dreaming; we started to eat.
After that shock, the people standing around us started in: ‘Were you with my mother, did you see my sister, you didn’t see my daughter, did you?’ One after the other, it was all questions. One of the women cooking said, ‘Keep quiet, are you blind, leave them be, until these two women have eaten!’
One of the older men, who was looking for his daughter, broke down in tears and said, ‘But they’re just eating and eating and eating, and it’ll never end, and they won’t say a word, how long do we have to wait?’ So that was the first day of my arrival.
Most people I knew greeted me very warmly, there were even those whose eyes filled with tears. I of course looked horrible. I was skinny, with no hair. That’s probably why they invited me for lunch, so I could have a proper meal.
Back then I didn’t feel sad [from what had happened during the war] - and I wasn’t an isolated case. For me only one important thing existed: to eat and eat and eat. I was invited mainly by non-Jewish friends, who said to me: ‘You've got no one, come over to our place, you'll eat your fill.’ I had bad luck only in that after the war there wasn't a very large selection of groceries.
So it happened that I even ate potato paprikash three times in a row. But that tasted great too, the important thing being for me to put something in my stomach. I can really only tell you how good it was. I only heard about some others, who had aggressive incidents towards them, like that more came back than were taken away, but nothing like that ever happened to me.
Before the war, we had a completely furnished four-room apartment. By the end, all we had – because we had to move four times during the war – was a two-and-a-half bedroom apartment at the beginning of what was once Zuckermandel, in the kind of house where there wasn’t even a bathroom.
Though, it was completely furnished, with even a bit more furniture than it needed. I didn’t take one step in there, because I still wasn’t ready to step into the place, where I last lived with my parents, when I already knew what had happened to them. But I had to sleep, not just eat.
On Venturska Street, I met one of my best girlfriends; of course, we didn’t know anything about each other for a long time. We kissed each other, and cried in our joy of meeting again. A stranger lady, who saw this, stopped and opened her bag, and took out a handkerchief, and gave it to me – that was the first thing I owned. She also asked, ‘And where are you sleeping?’
I said that I was invited to stay at two places already. She said, ‘You know what, I’ve got room, you can sleep there for a week, come with me.’ Well, that was a real joy. On the corner of Kupelna Street, we lived with the woman who later became the well-known writer and cabaret singer, Laszlo Kalina. She’d gotten an apartment there, where she had lived alone until then.
She said we could stay with her until we found something better, or somebody from our family with whom we could live. We stayed there for nearly a week. She also tried to get food here and there, but the food was the least of the problem.
There was a wood plank, put out to the bank, I stepped on it, and one of the ladies yelled after me, ‘You’ll fall in the Danube!’ Well, I answered, ‘I can still swim.’ It was pouring with rain, and a guy was standing on the bank, leaning on the fence, watching me as I swayed on this board. I get over to him, but I couldn’t stand up, so he helped me.
That lady, whom I’d told I was leaving, she also came, he also helped her. I said, ‘Would you be so kind as to give me a koruna, I want to make a phone call.’ I didn’t know who was alive and who wasn’t. He smiled at that, ‘The telephone doesn’t work, but here’s some money’, and he gave me a hundred. The lady who came with me, yells, ‘Wow! We’re rich, we’re going to stay at the Carlton.’ Then it turned out that a kilo of strawberries, cost a hundred koruna.
We headed toward the city, and our rabbi at that time, Dr. Frieder was coming straight toward us, with two Jews. He sees we just got off the ship, with no hair, bald. He says, ‘The girls just came by ship, I’m getting the permit, the captain telephoned.
Everybody can get off here.’ ‘And where do we go, we don’t know because…’ ‘Go to the Jewish kitchen to eat.’ I said, ‘Where’s that?’ Well, it’s over here, where Chez David is today, the kitchen was there. We went there, opened the door, it was packed with men, everybody smoking, there was so much smoke that I could hardly see. But in the kitchen part, I saw a familiar older lady.
My mother had known her well; she had had a nice leather shop sometime in Bratislava. She was cooking. She saw us, and was really glad, she said, ‘Have a seat.’ We sat down, and she brought us a café au lait and kuglof [coffee cake]. We thought we were dreaming; we started to eat.
After that shock, the people standing around us started in: ‘Were you with my mother, did you see my sister, you didn’t see my daughter, did you?’ One after the other, it was all questions. One of the women cooking said, ‘Keep quiet, are you blind, leave them be, until these two women have eaten!’
One of the older men, who was looking for his daughter, broke down in tears and said, ‘But they’re just eating and eating and eating, and it’ll never end, and they won’t say a word, how long do we have to wait?’ So that was the first day of my arrival.
Most people I knew greeted me very warmly, there were even those whose eyes filled with tears. I of course looked horrible. I was skinny, with no hair. That’s probably why they invited me for lunch, so I could have a proper meal.
Back then I didn’t feel sad [from what had happened during the war] - and I wasn’t an isolated case. For me only one important thing existed: to eat and eat and eat. I was invited mainly by non-Jewish friends, who said to me: ‘You've got no one, come over to our place, you'll eat your fill.’ I had bad luck only in that after the war there wasn't a very large selection of groceries.
So it happened that I even ate potato paprikash three times in a row. But that tasted great too, the important thing being for me to put something in my stomach. I can really only tell you how good it was. I only heard about some others, who had aggressive incidents towards them, like that more came back than were taken away, but nothing like that ever happened to me.
Before the war, we had a completely furnished four-room apartment. By the end, all we had – because we had to move four times during the war – was a two-and-a-half bedroom apartment at the beginning of what was once Zuckermandel, in the kind of house where there wasn’t even a bathroom.
Though, it was completely furnished, with even a bit more furniture than it needed. I didn’t take one step in there, because I still wasn’t ready to step into the place, where I last lived with my parents, when I already knew what had happened to them. But I had to sleep, not just eat.
On Venturska Street, I met one of my best girlfriends; of course, we didn’t know anything about each other for a long time. We kissed each other, and cried in our joy of meeting again. A stranger lady, who saw this, stopped and opened her bag, and took out a handkerchief, and gave it to me – that was the first thing I owned. She also asked, ‘And where are you sleeping?’
I said that I was invited to stay at two places already. She said, ‘You know what, I’ve got room, you can sleep there for a week, come with me.’ Well, that was a real joy. On the corner of Kupelna Street, we lived with the woman who later became the well-known writer and cabaret singer, Laszlo Kalina. She’d gotten an apartment there, where she had lived alone until then.
She said we could stay with her until we found something better, or somebody from our family with whom we could live. We stayed there for nearly a week. She also tried to get food here and there, but the food was the least of the problem.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Katarina Löfflerova