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The Lofflers came from Moravia, and lived in the city of Hodonin. My later husband’s grandfather went to school with Masaryk. The village where my husband was born was called Studienka. It wasn’t far from Malacky. He went to grammar school in Malacka, and then came to Bratislava; they came after World War I.
His father had died in the meantime, he lived with his widowed mother and his older sister and brother-in-law. They were Jewish, but likewise not religious. He came here to the Academy of Commerce, he matriculated here in Bratislava. After that he was in Vienna for some one-year – they call it today a ‘bakalar’ [first university graduate level] in exporting.
He came back, and then got a position at Schenker. It was the biggest forwarding agency in Europe. They had a few thousand employees all across Europe. They sent him to Prague, too. He stayed there for a while.
When the Germans occupied Prague, he immediately returned, but in the meantime, here the Slovak State had been formed. He stayed in Bratislava and lived through the war here, too, with false papers. He was really handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes. His mother tongue was Slovakian.
I had no ambition to get married. I knew that I could support myself alone, since I spoke four languages. I could get a job, they’d already asked for me, but I didn’t really feel okay, yet. Meanwhile, the summer passed somehow. I got together with my sister and her family.
They had hidden in the mountains, somehow escaped like that. They lived in Piestany then, I was with them for a while to somehow recover. I was in a bad state. One day, I became so horribly ill, and got such a headache that those who were often with me then – that was Loffler – called the ambulance, and they took me to the state hospital in Miczkiewicova Street.
They contended that I had meningitis, and that it was infectious. The hospital was full of wounded soldiers, Russians. I was in a separate room, because I was the only patient that was sick with meningitis. I was lucky at the time that I had no idea how dangerous it was. They started treating me.
Penicillin existed then, they knew about it, but not here in this country. [Mass-production of penicillin began in the USA in 1940, but was not generally available in Czechoslovakia throughout the 1940s.] They still didn’t have it, so I got a completely different medicine, which likewise had to be injected every six hours. The important thing is: I really got better.
In those days, the clinic president was Professor Derer. On occasion, very rarely, all those doctors would make a visitation. In the morning, the nurse came – they were nuns – gave me a fresh sleeping gown, and started brushing the little hair that was already growing back. I begged her, please don’t, because my head is terribly sensitive.
She said, she had to, because I was going to a demonstration. ‘Good Lord! Well, I can hardly walk, I can barely sit up!’ – I was in despair. In a few minutes, Professor Derer showed up with a lot of doctors and nurses. It turned out, I was the only one who got better from this medicine that they were using in place of penicillin, in a relatively short time.
As he examined me, everything was great, when he touched me, he said to the nurse, ‘Take this patient’s temperature!’ I had a temperature of 39 degrees [Celsius; 102 degrees Fahrenheit]. He said, ‘Well, today we aren’t going anywhere.’ They left, and I immediately started to cry, that now, after I’d already been better, this happened.
The two nun nurses reassured me, ‘Don’t cry, there’s no reason to’. She said to me, ’You just didn’t want to go, that’s why you got a fever.’ I said, ‘Sister, don’t say such things. The professor knows what he’s talking about.’ ‘How would he, he’s just a professor, but I’m the head nurse here!’ She was right, because two days later I was completely alright.
His father had died in the meantime, he lived with his widowed mother and his older sister and brother-in-law. They were Jewish, but likewise not religious. He came here to the Academy of Commerce, he matriculated here in Bratislava. After that he was in Vienna for some one-year – they call it today a ‘bakalar’ [first university graduate level] in exporting.
He came back, and then got a position at Schenker. It was the biggest forwarding agency in Europe. They had a few thousand employees all across Europe. They sent him to Prague, too. He stayed there for a while.
When the Germans occupied Prague, he immediately returned, but in the meantime, here the Slovak State had been formed. He stayed in Bratislava and lived through the war here, too, with false papers. He was really handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes. His mother tongue was Slovakian.
I had no ambition to get married. I knew that I could support myself alone, since I spoke four languages. I could get a job, they’d already asked for me, but I didn’t really feel okay, yet. Meanwhile, the summer passed somehow. I got together with my sister and her family.
They had hidden in the mountains, somehow escaped like that. They lived in Piestany then, I was with them for a while to somehow recover. I was in a bad state. One day, I became so horribly ill, and got such a headache that those who were often with me then – that was Loffler – called the ambulance, and they took me to the state hospital in Miczkiewicova Street.
They contended that I had meningitis, and that it was infectious. The hospital was full of wounded soldiers, Russians. I was in a separate room, because I was the only patient that was sick with meningitis. I was lucky at the time that I had no idea how dangerous it was. They started treating me.
Penicillin existed then, they knew about it, but not here in this country. [Mass-production of penicillin began in the USA in 1940, but was not generally available in Czechoslovakia throughout the 1940s.] They still didn’t have it, so I got a completely different medicine, which likewise had to be injected every six hours. The important thing is: I really got better.
In those days, the clinic president was Professor Derer. On occasion, very rarely, all those doctors would make a visitation. In the morning, the nurse came – they were nuns – gave me a fresh sleeping gown, and started brushing the little hair that was already growing back. I begged her, please don’t, because my head is terribly sensitive.
She said, she had to, because I was going to a demonstration. ‘Good Lord! Well, I can hardly walk, I can barely sit up!’ – I was in despair. In a few minutes, Professor Derer showed up with a lot of doctors and nurses. It turned out, I was the only one who got better from this medicine that they were using in place of penicillin, in a relatively short time.
As he examined me, everything was great, when he touched me, he said to the nurse, ‘Take this patient’s temperature!’ I had a temperature of 39 degrees [Celsius; 102 degrees Fahrenheit]. He said, ‘Well, today we aren’t going anywhere.’ They left, and I immediately started to cry, that now, after I’d already been better, this happened.
The two nun nurses reassured me, ‘Don’t cry, there’s no reason to’. She said to me, ’You just didn’t want to go, that’s why you got a fever.’ I said, ‘Sister, don’t say such things. The professor knows what he’s talking about.’ ‘How would he, he’s just a professor, but I’m the head nurse here!’ She was right, because two days later I was completely alright.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Katarina Löfflerova