Arpad Erdelyi with relatives and partisans

This photo is from the Turiec region, near the village of Motycky, where we were in hiding. It was taken in March 1945, shortly before we returned home. I, Heda Ambrova, at that time Hechtova, am sitting on the ground along with Dominik Ruzicka. Standing behind us, from left: Our connection, a German woman named Mitzi, my father Arpad Erdelyi, I don’t know the next person, Vojtech Kürti, I don’t know the next person, and Karol Kürti.

During our stay in the mountains we also experienced a few close calls. Another group was active nearby. They weren’t very disciplined. They used to go on the castle road, where the German army had patrols. Well, as luck would have it, they caught them. Their only one bit of luck is that they were older soldiers, Austrians. They didn’t concern themselves with them, and said to them: ‘You know what, we’ll turn around, and you’ll go away!’ The second close call was when Domin and I went on patrol. Suddenly he threw me on the ground. I asked him what was going on!? ‘You didn’t hear that bullet?!’ Back then we told ourselves that we’d had amazing luck. If it was to happen again, we probably wouldn’t have survived. Daily we’d wake up to the unknown. We didn’t know what the day had in store for us.

We were in the mountains until the liberation of Banska Bystrica. Bystrica was liberated on 26th March 1945. We didn’t want to leave our hiding place yet. Karol Kürti said that we still had very hard times in store. ‘Don’t be in a rush, you’ll look back fondly at our stay in Turiec.’ That happened, too. We didn’t come down until 10th April. We packed everything up and set out in the direction of Bystrica. On the way we met Dr. Geiger from Ruzomberok. He joined us. Because we didn’t have any way of getting to Bystrica, we went to our friend the German lady, who’d been our connection the last several months. Her name was Mrs. Müller. There we found out that my boyfriend at the time, Goldstein, had fallen in the uprising. If he hadn’t fallen, I would’ve probably married him.

Photos from this interviewee