Tag #139042 - Interview #100840 (Bedrich Hecht)

My political opinions are quite neutral. I don’t like extremes. I can’t say that I’m active in the Jewish community. There are very few Jews in Nitra. When there are some annual holidays, we go to the synagogue or to the cemetery. But basically there isn’t an active life here like there is in Bratislava. The problem is mainly in that there aren’t enough people here. To be honest, at my age I see my friends very rarely. I can’t say that all the Jews that I meet up with in Nitra are my friends, because some of them are very young. It’s hard to express the number of my Jewish friends in terms of percentage. Maybe it’s 20 or 30%. I was never fixated on selecting my friends according to whether they were Jews or not. My friends and I talk about various things, normal things. We don’t discuss Judaism or Jewish matters, we’re not that religious. I accepted compensation from the Claims Conference. During the last census, I definitely wrote that my religion is Jewish. I don’t remember exactly if I wrote nationality as Slovak.

We keep in touch with our grandson mostly by phone, because he studies and lives in Bratislava. I don’t have a computer at home, and don’t even know how to use one. My grandson is always sitting on the internet and writing with his friends. My grandson didn’t attend any Jewish school. His relationship with Jewry is such that he knows that his mother is Jewish, pureblooded Jewish, and my son is mixed. He’s neutral. He’s not anti-Jewish, but neither is he convinced that he should be involved in Jewry.