Tag #139025 - Interview #100840 (Bedrich Hecht)

My working life was as follows. Before the war I worked on our farm. Due to the fact that the Slovak State [8] was created, they confiscated our property [3]. The National Property Fund was created, and I worked there until the time I had to leave in 1944. In May of 1945 I returned, and again got a job in the fund; later I worked in agriculture as a superintendent of state property. Then came the year 1949, and they confiscated our property and house [14], and demolished the house. Later we did get things back in the restitutions [restitution: a law regarding the return of property – Editor’s note], but everything had been demolished. I got a job in a sugar refinery, where I worked for 37 years. From there I went into retirement. At the sugar refinery, I worked as the manager of the raw materials purchasing department. I liked my work. I never had conflicts at work due to my being a Jew, not even during wartime, when I was running the farm in the village. I can’t even say that the employees were arrogant to me, or anything similar. after the war I didn’t have any problems with this. I climbed the career ladder even despite it being in my records that I was from a bourgeois family. I had relatively good results at work. I began as an agronomist, later they promoted me to departmental manager, deputy director. I was responsible for raw materials, sugar cane and vegetable canning. We were a small collective, I and three agronomists. We had a good atmosphere at work, we got along quite well. I stopped working three years ago.

I worked in the sugar refinery for 37 years, and I can’t say that I felt any anti-Semitism there. No one ever said anything to my face. I had a quite advanced position, so I can’t say that I was oppressed in some way. I got along with people, I tried, though I was strict. I wasn’t arrogant or something similar. Yes, certainly there is anti-Semitism, but one can’t say that it was very deep. At least I didn’t feel it. With the passing of the anti-Jewish laws [3] it began. Back then it was unpleasant, when the principal called us in and they threw us out of school. At that time you felt worthless. Well, but what can you do? Those were the times. It’s only later that we realized it.

I never signed a loyalty oath. I was a department head, and we used to have various foreign visitors, so we had to sign a statement that we wouldn’t talk about certain things of a political nature. At work we had to have a socialist work brigade, which means that within the scope of our section, we had to have a brigade that was evaluated within the company as a whole . That was the case with all sections.