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After returning home, when he found out that his loved ones had died in concentration camps, he ended up at the beginning of the 1950s as an accused ‘saboteur’ of the Communist regime in the uranium mines at Jachymov. He survived it all. He also survived the fact that after 1989 [22] the courts of a democratic country weren’t capable of seeing justice done, and compensate him for the fact that their family’s home in the center of Lucenec had been confiscated during the war on the basis of race laws of Szalasi’s fascist [23] government. The work of the Nazis was topped off by the Communists with an unbelievably shameless act, when they applied a decree on the confiscation of the property of Nazis and their collaborators against a hero of the anti-Fascist resistance!
As if it wasn’t enough, in 1996 the District Court in Lucenec refused his request for compensation with the argument that he wasn’t the owner of the house: according to the laws of the Fascist Szalasi regime. But the fate of their house had come to an absurd end long before – when in 1975 they tore it down and on its property built the building of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia. Somehow too many symbolic events!
People liked listening to him, because each time there was a story hidden in there somewhere: ‘I lived through absolute freedom, pain, joy and despair,’ he used to say. At the close of the summer of 1944, the largest operation in history took place on the coast of Normandy, France. They battled on land as well as on the sea. ‘I was in an American Sherman tank. It was a good machine, but it had one fault. It was very slow. When we were driving by Caen, I counted as many as 200 destroyed tanks. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. They were in flames. Lying around them were dead bodies. Those that hadn’t been shot had burned alive in their tank. We were given the task of occupying important bridges. We were determined to obey the order at all costs. Though we surprised and confused the Germans, they responded very readily. They were shooting at everything that moved. Fighters, bombers, grenades, bullets, swamps and thousands of dead. A friend threw himself on a mine to save us. There was no time to mourn him. Thick machine-gun fire pinned us to the ground. We found out that Hitler was still in doubt whether this was the true invasion. We were lying in a stream. The Germans were already less than 5 meters away from us. We were tired. Our commander’s submachine gun slipped from his shoulder. It clanked against his helmet, which he had placed on the ground beside him. The Germans heard it. At that moment, I realized only one thing – that they can’t kill the commander. I jumped up from the stream and bellowed for them to surrender, that there were mines everywhere here. They surrendered! We were saved. We kept advancing. The Germans were putting up resistance mainly by the seashore. At the beginning of August, the Allies had the road to Paris along the Seine open.
As if it wasn’t enough, in 1996 the District Court in Lucenec refused his request for compensation with the argument that he wasn’t the owner of the house: according to the laws of the Fascist Szalasi regime. But the fate of their house had come to an absurd end long before – when in 1975 they tore it down and on its property built the building of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia. Somehow too many symbolic events!
People liked listening to him, because each time there was a story hidden in there somewhere: ‘I lived through absolute freedom, pain, joy and despair,’ he used to say. At the close of the summer of 1944, the largest operation in history took place on the coast of Normandy, France. They battled on land as well as on the sea. ‘I was in an American Sherman tank. It was a good machine, but it had one fault. It was very slow. When we were driving by Caen, I counted as many as 200 destroyed tanks. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. They were in flames. Lying around them were dead bodies. Those that hadn’t been shot had burned alive in their tank. We were given the task of occupying important bridges. We were determined to obey the order at all costs. Though we surprised and confused the Germans, they responded very readily. They were shooting at everything that moved. Fighters, bombers, grenades, bullets, swamps and thousands of dead. A friend threw himself on a mine to save us. There was no time to mourn him. Thick machine-gun fire pinned us to the ground. We found out that Hitler was still in doubt whether this was the true invasion. We were lying in a stream. The Germans were already less than 5 meters away from us. We were tired. Our commander’s submachine gun slipped from his shoulder. It clanked against his helmet, which he had placed on the ground beside him. The Germans heard it. At that moment, I realized only one thing – that they can’t kill the commander. I jumped up from the stream and bellowed for them to surrender, that there were mines everywhere here. They surrendered! We were saved. We kept advancing. The Germans were putting up resistance mainly by the seashore. At the beginning of August, the Allies had the road to Paris along the Seine open.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Viola Rozalia Fischerova