Travel

Otto Simko
Bratislava
Slovak Republic
Interviewer: Zuzana Slobodnikova
Date of interview: February - March 2005

Otto Simko is a man in the best years of his life, and is fully enjoying his "golden age". He actively engages in sports activities, devotes time to his hobbies and lives a rich cultural life. Within his family circle and the company of his grandchildren, he now with just a smile on his face reminisces about the many hard times in his life. He recalls what was beautiful and good. His family, friends and those close to him. Even though he's already lost many of them, they still hold a place in his heart. Many of the events in his life are moving and sad, but time has already healed these wounds. Even though they can never be completely forgotten.

Family background">Family background

My name is Otto Simko. I'm the son of Artur and Irena Simko. My name is unusual for a Jewish family [Jews living on Slovak territory before World War II had mostly German surnames, which is closely tied to the reforms of Jozef II 1 - Editor's note], which is why I decided to investigate its origins. I pondered where it could possibly originate, and came upon one thing. During the time of Austro-Hungary, my great-grandfather lived in Halic [Halic: later Galicia, is a historical territory in today's southeastern Poland and northwest Ukraine. During the years 1772 - 1918 it belonged to Austro-Hungary - Editor's note]. This means that the name Simko is probably of Polish origin. But it's quite possible that my great- grandfather changed his original Jewish name in Halic, because the name Simko isn't Jewish. According to documents that I have, my great- grandfather must have spoken German, as back then our name, Simko, was written Schimko and was written in German Schwabacher [also called Gothic, or black-letter script].

My grandfather, Albert Simko, was born in 1866 in the town of Rajcany. He had a pub in a small village named Dolne Chlebany, today it's in the Topolcany district. It was a typically Jewish pub, together with a small store. My grandparents were married on 25th August 1891. I don't know much about Grandpa Simko. I remember that he used to give me candies, just little details like that. I know that he spoke German, Hungarian and of course Slovak. My grandfather was a kulak 2. He had 40 hectares of land in Dolne Chlebany, in Rajcany and I don't know where else. I also know that my grandfather annually sent two wagons of hops to Munich.

My grandma, Malvina Simkova, nee Löwyova, was born on 11th June 1871 in Trencin. Someone remembered that her grandfather, or great-grandfather was a famous rabbi. But who it was, I have no idea. From this one can deduce that in those days these members of my family were Orthodox Jews 3 [Neolog communities 4 in Slovakia began appearing only after the Budapest Congress in the years 1868/69 - Editor's note]. I had very good experiences with my grandma. After my grandfather died she lived with us. Grandma even also brought up my daughter, Dasa. She was a very wise woman. People from all around used to always come to her for advice. Malvinéni [Hungarian: Aunt Malvina - Editor's note] was a concept. When she was 95, she was drinking beer in Zelezna Studnicka [Zelezna Studnicka: a recreational region near Bratislava - Editor's note] and someone said "Grandma, that's a beautiful age to be." She said: "What? That's a beautiful age?! Eighty, that was beautiful!". So I'm sticking to that, and when I was 80, I said to myself that this is that beautiful age that my grandma mentioned. She was of small stature, poor and those kind of people live a long time. She had gray hair. Beautiful smiling eyes. Her eyes, shone, laughed. She radiated well-being and wisdom. She had no schooling. She was a housewife from the farm. She had natural intelligence and that's what gave her personality character. Grandma Malvina died at the age of 100, on 19th May 1971, and is buried in Slavicie Udolie in Bratislava. Up to the war, Grandma was an Orthodox Jewess. After the war, no longer.

The Braun family is from my mother's branch of the family. My grandparents were named Vilmos [in Slovak Viliam] Braun and Cecilia Braunova. My grandfather on my mother's side was born in the town of Dolna Lehota, in 1850. He owned a café in Nitra. The popular Braun Café was very well known in this city. The café was located in the center of Nitra, beside the then Theater of Andrej Bagar. Unfortunately it's been since town down. They were enlarging the town square, so they leveled it. I don't remember my grandfather, he died in Nitra in 1920. That one I never knew. My grandma, Cili [Cecilia], her I remember well. She and her husband had eleven children. I think that two of them died right after birth. What my grandmother's maiden name was, that I don't know. I only know that she was originally from Nitra. She was born in 1856 and died, in 1936, in her hometown of Nitra.

The most characteristic for the whole family was Vilmos Braun. I've even got a book, named Nevet a Nyitra - Usmievava Nitra [in Hungarian and Slovak: Smiling Nitra], that contains all the anecdotes about Vilmos Braun. There are a lot of them. They're anecdotes typical of small-town café life during peacetime [during the time of the First Czechoslovak Republic 5 - Editor's note], when people had no worries. They amused themselves by playing tricks on each other and were happy when they successfully pulled off some mischievous prank.

One of the anecdotes about the Brauns says that Grandma Cili always asked: "Mikor jöttel haza? When did you come home? "I was already home at one." She didn't believe him and said to herself: "I'll get the better of you." She lay down in bed crosswise. He'll have to wake her up when he comes home at night...! In the morning Grandma wakes up, and Vilmos is fast asleep beside her. Or there was this ad in Hungarian. At night a bed during the day a 'fotel'. That's this type of folding bed. And he wrote a letter to the factory. Please sirs, I'm a café owner, I work at night and sleep during the day. Do you also have something that's a 'fotel' at night, and a bed during the day? It's full of these stories. Vilmos had a beautiful watch. "Mr. Schlessinger, I'll give this watch to you." "But why?" "My only condition is that you've always got to tell me the time. When I ask you, when I won't have a watch. You'll tell me." Schlessinger knew that something was up. But he took the watch. Vilmos let him wait for two days, after all, he had a spare watch. The third day, at 1:00 a.m., his servant is banging on Schlessinger's window: "Mr. Braun wants to know what time it is.' So by then Schlessinger knew what the deal was. That's the Braun family.

Of Cecilia and Vilmos's children, Aladar now occurs to me. He died along with this whole family in Sobibor 6. His wife Sarika as well as the children, basically the whole family died. Aladar was an extremely interesting person. At home he at first began to raise rabbits. Then he rented out a spa - Ganovce, near Poprad, and recruited children from Budapest, and also from all of Slovakia, advertising it as being in the Tatras [High Tatras: mountain range in northern Slovakia. The highest peak is Gerlachovsky Peak (2,644 m) - Editor's note]. Children from Budapest arrived there, having been sent to the Tatras by their parents. But they never saw the Tatras. Ganovce was three kilometers from Poprad [Poprad: the biggest town in the foothills of the High Tatras, with a population of 54,098 - Editor's note]. But Aladar was so clever, that he knew how to deal with them and keep them there. In the end everyone was satisfied. I also used to go there together with my brother every summer.

Here's one interesting incident with Aladar, so you can get to know the Braun nature. There was a Mr. Pazmandy in Nitra, a well-known man. He was this "degenerate' member of the upper class, simply put, a little loopy. Once Pazmandy arrived in Ganovce with his coach, or car, I don't exactly know any more. He arrived with a fishing rod. When Aladar saw him, he said to himself: "Holy moly, how in the world will I get rid of him?!" and asked him: "Pazmandy, why are you here?" "Well, I've come to catch some fish." "And what's the fishing rod for?" "I've come to fish, haven't I?" "Mr. Pazmandy, here in Ganovce we catch fish in a completely different way.' "And how, Mr. Braun?" "Well, you need an alarm clock and an axe." "And how's that?" "You put the alarm clock on the shore, and when a fish comes to have a look what time it is, you hit it on the head." To this he replied: "Sir, you have insulted me!" He turned around and offended went home. That's the Braun nature.

I'd also mention the black sheep of the family. This was Eugen Braun, a musical clown. The way it sounds. A typical musical clown, with a little violin and lots of instruments. He used to perform in circuses in Belgrade, Budapest, Sofia - all over the Balkans. A big black sheep of the family. A clown. But he was hugely successful. The king of the southern Slavs, Petar II 7 even invited him to his court. What he did is that he arrived with a large violin, broke it, and took out of it a small violin. Otherwise he also had a cello. But he didn't want to carry it around any more, and so he gave it to me, and I then had to learn to play the cello, because of him. His clown nickname was Kvak [Quack]. Because he used to perform with a trained duck. The duck was trained so that he'd put it down beside him. He'd play and the duck would quack in time, when he wanted. How he did it, I have no idea, but he had huge success with that duck. Once a terrible thing happened. He sent the duck home, and Grandma Cili slaughtered it. That was a huge catastrophe. Now, I don't want to wrong her, whether she killed it on purpose or not. But a clown for a son didn't sit well with her.

I remember, this was already in the time of the Slovak State 8. At the time Eugen was living in Romania. He said that he'd like to come home, and Grandma wrote him don't come, as things are bad for Jews here. Despite that he came. He was home for three weeks and died. He died a natural death in the hospital. As if he'd felt that he'd die and needed to say goodbye to his family. That might have been in 1942, right when the transports were taking place. He might have been about 44 or 45 years old at the time.

Another of my mother's brothers was Artur. He lived in Bratislava, in the Manderlak [Manderlak or Manderla Tower: considered to be the first so- called skyscraper in Bratislava, and in Slovakia. It was built in 1935 according to the designs of Rudolf Manderla, after whom it is named. It has 11 floors and for a long time was the tallest residential building in Bratislava - Editor's note]. He worked as a clerk for some insurance company. Later, after the war, he lived in New Zealand. Before he died, he managed to return home. He died on the plane on the way back to New Zealand. It was as if both Artur and Eugen both felt their end drawing near, and came to say home to say goodbye. Artur's son was in the English army, and after the war [World War II] the moved to New Zealand.

My mother's oldest sister was Matilnéni, alias Matilda. Matilnéni had two husbands. Her first husband was Juraj Weiss. Her first son with this husband was Kliment. After the war he was hounded by the StB 9. He died tragically, as the StB came to his apartment in Cukrova Street in Bratislava. He didn't want them to arrest him, and so he jumped out of the fourth floor. He committed suicide. Matilda's second son, Ondrej, who we called Bandi, Weiss was a musician. He used to play in cafés. He died during the Holocaust, in the gas. He was one very merry boy. See, a typical Braun. He didn't have any children. The third son, Ludovit Klein, was already from my Aunt Matilda's second marriage. He lived in Munich. He died a natural death. He survived the war in Hungary. Later he emigrated in Lima, and then to Munich. Matilnéni died of cancer, already before the Holocaust, in Nitra.

The most tragic fate was that of Serena Braunova. Sczemcinéni [Hungarian: Aunt Sczemci]. She married a man by the name of Bela Szilagyi. Bela Szilagyi was a very respected Nitra lawyer during the times of a mayor named Mojto [Frantisek Mojto]. He died already before the war, in 1937. Serena was the richest of my mother's siblings. After her husband's death she owned fields and properties in the city and its surroundings. But later, riches cost her her life. Someone told her to sell her properties, that it would save her from deportation. But as soon as she sold them - for a symbolic price, of course, they immediately put her on a transport, with the comment 'return undesirable'. Serena and Bela had no children.

Lajos [Ludovit Braun] survived the Holocaust using Aryan papers in Liptovsky Hradok, as a journalist, under the name Ludovit Bran. He kept on writing, he even published some articles, mainly a Hungarian paper. I think the paper was named Reggel. In Nitra he had a stationery store by the name of Palas. He didn't start a family, he lived with his wife, Aranka. They didn't have any children. After the war he died of cancer. Aranka then lived in Nitra in a retirement home. She died of natural causes.

The next was Hugo. He later ran the Braun Café after his grandfather. He's also illustrated in that book, Usmevava Nitra. Of course there are also some anecdotes in about him. He was in hiding during the war, but I don't know where. He died after the Holocaust of natural causes. He married before the war, and had a son, Viliam. His nickname is Bubi. Bubi lives in Munich.

Rezso, Rudolf, they called Cigi, because he was like a gypsy, completely black [from Cigan, the Slovak word for Gypsy]. I've got this impression that Grandma Cili must have had him with some Gypsy [the interviewee said it as a joke - Editor's note]. He was an amazing guy! He was very intelligent. In fact, during the war he saved me. My family, the Simkos - that is, my grandma, brother, father, mother and I, were in a camp in Vyhne. Before Vyhne we were in the Zilina collection camp. Rezso was still free. He made us a fake baptism certificate. So that we'd been converted [to Christianity] before 1938. I'd never in my life seen a priest, and neither had my family. Anyways, those who'd had themselves converted before 1938 were supposed to go to the Vyhne camp 10. It was for those in mixed marriages and Jews who'd converted before 1938. And Rezso brought a piece of paper to Zilina, that my father had been converted in 1938, so they didn't send us to the gas in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but to Vyhne. Basically, he saved us. He himself didn't manage to save himself. They then caught him in the second batch 11 and in 1944 he died.

All the Brauns had a high school education, with a natural intelligence and capable of surviving and knowing how to get ahead in life. In a word a typical vital family... Unfortunately not all of them managed to survive the horrors of the war.

My father, Artur Simko, was born in Dolne Chlebany on 31st August 1892. He's the son of Malvina and Albert Simko. He studied in Budapest. That's also this little curiosity. Jews were usually faithful to the regime that was in power at the time. Back then it was Austro-Hungary. My father was somewhat of an exception, he didn't fit into the usual Jewish stereotype. He got into Slovak society, and was a pan-Slavist 12. Sometimes he even had problems because of it, as my grandma, his mother told me that once some people came to see her and said to her: "If you don't do something about that Artur of yours, if you don't rein him in, we'll have to put him in jail." Actually, he was a dissident even back than. A Slovak against Hungarians. That's really quite atypical among Jews. In 1922 my father Artur married my mother Irena, nee Braunova. How they met and where the marriage took place, that I don't know anything about.

My mother, Irena, is of course one of the daughters of Viliam and Cecilia Braun. She was born in 1897 in Nitra. They called her Csibi. No one knew her by any other name than Csibinéni. Csibe, which means chick, that's from Hungarian. Because she was this typical little chick, merry and chipper. My mother was amazing. Unfortunately she got cancer. Just the year before she died, we'd still been skating and skiing together. In 1953 she died suddenly in Zilina of cancer.

After their marriage, my father and mother moved to Topolcany. After Grandpa died, Grandma moved in with us, and became a matter-of-fact part of our family. At first my father made a living as a lawyer, but this profession didn't make him very much, as a barrister he want bankrupt. And mainly because others were charging fifty crowns an hour, and he charged ten. He was also an extremely fair person. Not very suited for the world as it was back then. Well, because he didn't succeed as a lawyer, he became a judge. They then transferred him in this job from place to place. When I was 3 years old we had to move from Topolcany to Nove Zamky. So as a three- year-old I moved to Nove Zamky. But after three years we again moved. This time to Nitra. They'd transferred my father there, and our entire family, including Grandma, had to move again. In Nitra my father worked as a judicial advisor. I don't remember much from Topolcany or Nove Zamky any more. But Nitra was my entire childhood. My mother liked to dress nicely and fashionably, and I've even got photos. My father was a judge and also dressed well.

In Nitra we had a four-room apartment. My parents had the bedroom, my grandmother and I shared a room. Another room was this fancy one, and one was a normal one. We had it very nicely furnished. Wooden furniture from the beginning of the 20th Century, leather armchairs, a dining table with chairs, a piano. They were these elegant things. I've got them to this day. We had an exceptionally large library. All this belonged to the standard our household was at. We also had a grand piano. My mother played the piano and, later so did I. I still play to this day. I can't read music, but I know how to play. Though I did take music lessons for about two years, I didn't learn much, because I hated the teacher. We had only a few things that were typically Jewish. A Chanukkah candelabra, that we definitely had. I don't know if there was a mezuzah [Mezuzah: a box for parchment that's fastened on the right side of gates and doors in Jewish households - Editor's note] on the door. We only used the candelabra during Chanukkah [Chanukkah - the Festival of Lights, also commemorates the rebellion of the Maccabees and the re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem - Editor's note]. Mother would play the piano and we'd sing. Though we weren't Orthodox, we cooked kosher 3. At least Grandma tried to keep it up. There'd always be barches, shoulet and other Jewish foods. On Friday we roasted a goose. First would come liver with cracklings, then on Saturday the drumsticks and on Sunday we'd have the breasts. This is exactly the way it went every week. At home we observed virtually all the holidays. There was seder [Seder: a term expressing a home service and a requisite ritual on the first night of the Passover holiday - Editor's note], Pesach [Pesach or Passover: commemorates the Israelites leaving Egyptian captivity, and is characterized by many regulations and customs. The main is the prohibition on eating anything leavened - Editor's note]. For Sukkot [Sukkot: the Festival of Tents. A singularly festive atmosphere dominates during the entire week that this holiday takes place, where the most important things is being in a sukkah - Editor's note]. My favorite was Pesach, and I also remember seder. So, for example, my grandfather kept his café open both on Friday and Saturday [The Sabbath: during the Sabbath, 39 main work activities are forbidden, from which the prohibition if others stems. Among the forbidden activities is for example "the manipulation of money" - Editor's note]. I've got this impression that he was also Neolog. For sure they weren't Orthodox, when he had his café open on Saturday, and accepted money. Not only the Jewish population visited the café. The gentry also visited it, small-town bon vivants.

Growing up">Growing up

I spent practically my entire childhood in Nitra. Very often we'd go to Zobor [Zobor: a hill by the city of Nitra (height above sea level 588 m), in the Tribec mountain range - Editor's note], both with friends and with my family. I know every corner of it there. I spent all my free time there. In the summer we'd go biking there, in the winter skiing. I always liked sports. I spent a lot of my free time doing sporting activities. At home we had a ping-pong table in the courtyard. My brother and I would often play table tennis. In those days there were two places to swim in Nitra, so we used to go swimming.

When I was 13 I had a bar mitzvah [Bar mitzvah: "son of the commandments", a Jewish boy that has reached the age of 13. A ceremony in which a boy is proclaimed to be bar mitzvah; from this time onwards he must obey all commandments prescribed by the Torah - Editor's note]. I know that I had to study with a cantor. I wasn't very good at singing, that was very bad, but I suffered through it and then some children that my parents had invited to our place came for the party. I don't think that I got a gift as such. I had only the party. My brother also had a bar mitzvah. Both of us had it in the Neolog synagogue in Nitra with Rabbi Schweiger.

My father was a judge. We didn't go hungry, but neither were we rich. I know that my father's monthly salary was 1200 crowns [in 1929, it was decreed by law that one Czechoslovak crown (Kc) was equal in value to 44.58 mg of gold - Editor's note]. That was a lot, but not again that huge an amount. The only one in the family back then to have a car was Serena Szilagyi. We also had one permanent household helper, besides the one that took care of us children. She took care of the household, cooked and did the shopping. She lived with us. I also know that she used to get 20 crowns a month.

Aunt Serena once paid for our vacation in Yugoslavia. That I remember, that she took my mother, brother plus one lady who took care of us children on vacation. We had this woman in our household that took care of us. We were in Crikvenica, by the sea. At that time I was about 7, my brother 3 years younger. I've got the feeling that Aunt Szilagyi also helped us financially. My mother was this entertaining type. I remember that when we were in Yugoslavia, below deck there was a piano, she was playing the piano and having fun, and I started crying. She was very disappointed that she couldn't play the piano. She felt good when she played. They were dancing there and I began crying and then she had to take me and leave. My mother was this entertaining type of person. She always liked to have fun, she and my father would also go to New Year's parties and I'd always wait to see what they'd bring me, what sort of balloons and confetti and things like that.

I've talked about my parents and grandparents, and we didn't get to my brother yet. Well, I wasn't a good student. My brother Ivan was always getting top marks. A much better student than I. He was very talented, and wanted to be a doctor, he was a great kid. He was born in 1927 and in 1944 he died. He was only 17 at the time. He was still this child that was growing up. This is what happened to him. You see, he was always very bold. We didn't look like Jews. He was hiding out in Nitra on Zobor and someone gave him away. Then he was in the Sered work camp 14 and before the deportations he hid in a pile of sawdust. But they found him, and then, when they were transporting them in a train to one of the concentration camps, he was apparently sawing his way out of one of the wagons. He wanted to jump out of the wagon while they were still transporting them. He tried to save his own life right up to the last moment. Unfortunately he didn't manage to. After that I didn't hear anything more about my brother.

As I've mentioned, my father was already a pan-Slavist during the time of Austro-Hungary. Then after the front, after World War I, also atypical for a Jew in Topolcany, in Koruna, he founded the Slovak National Council [Slovak National Council: the name of several high-level organs of various types during the history of Slovakia. See also 15 - Editor's note]. Koruna was the most elegant place there, a café. There were lots of Jews and Hungarians in high functions in Hungary, who were saying goodbye to Austro-Hungary and were still singing the Hungarian anthem. In the "next room over" my father was founding the Slovak National Council. My father's entire tendency was pro-Slovak, I'd say. For example, when during the war they wanted us to save ourselves from the Holocaust in Hungary, my father was against it. That was one line. The second line was social democracy [Czechoslovak Socially Democratic Labor Party - Editor's note]. He was on good terms with the minister of justice, Deder 16. My father was probably the only leftist judge in the region. It wasn't usual for judges. They were all national socialists, in short they were in the "butcher parties", they weren't in leftist parties. My father was this solo player, this black sheep. During the First Republic the Social Democrats were very active. I know that we used to go to the Social Democrats' Labor House. It was called the Labor Physical Education Union. The on the basis of this I became a shomer [a member of the Hashomer Hatzair movement. See also 17 - Editor's note]. A shomer was the closest thing to those leftists.

During the Slovak National Uprising 18 my father represented to city of Nitra at the unification congress of the Social Democrats and the Communists. That was the line, completely clear-cut, that my father took. My mother was apolitical. She couldn't care less one way or the other. She had completely different interests. And this Czechoslovak patriotism of our father's was also passed on to my brother and me. I remember composing poems about Stefanik 19. And even today, I can still recite that poem that I wrote as a schoolboy on October 28th [the anniversary of the creation of the First Czechoslovak Republic - Editor's note]. I pasted tricolors all over my chair, and recited on that chair. I still have that chair. That Czechoslovak patriotism was very strong in our family.

My father was so respected that people tried not to express any anti-Jewish comments or indications in front of him. They had to try hard. My father was the first to begin with the People's Courts 20 after World War II. It was this satisfaction for him. Nitra was the first district in the republic and my father was the first judge who began trials with Fascists and Guardists 21. For example the Guardist Gombarcik, he convicted him and I even saw his execution. He was a person who had regular murders on his conscience. Then, when the National Court ended with big trials like Tiso 22 and Mach 23, my father became the chairman of the National Court in Bratislava. He judged people like Tido Jozef Gaspar 24 and Karmasin 25, the local German boss. He also judged Wisliceny 26 - Eichmann's advisor in Slovakia!

Despite the fact that we had never hidden our Jewish origins, by our name and the way we looked people mostly didn't recognize it. In Nitra our whole family also attended synagogue, yet we didn't belong to that part of the population against whom others would have some sort of objections to. Somehow they considered our family to be good Slovaks and one of them. So in the pre-war period we never felt any anti-Semitism. We also had friends and acquaintances from mixed society, both Jews and non-Jews. So it was actually this kind of assimilation, in the good sense of the word. Certain religious customs were preserved, the Jewish identity remained. But it never came across as repellent for the surrounding population. So they accepted our family without any problems. I can say that this time was without any expressions of anti-Semitism whatsoever. The breaking point didn't come until later, at school.

The principal of the people's school 27 was Feher. An exceptionally intelligent man, who kept the school at a very high standard. Unfortunately that school building is also a sad symbol for me, because Jews were concentrated in this school in Parovce before transports from in and around Nitra. From there and the through the train station began the road to the gas. So that school actually has two faces for me. One in the fact that I attended it and had very good adventures and experiences. A few years later it was a collection point for Jews.

The first time I traveled by train it was under these peculiar circumstances. It was in people's school. President Masaryk 28 was passing through Zbehy, probably to Topolcany [Kastiel in Topolcany was the summer home of president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk - Editor's note]. Principal Feher took our class to Zbehy by train. At the trains station in Zbehy we were waving to Masaryk, and at the time Bechyne [Bechyne, Rudolf (1881 - 1948): Czech journalist and publicist, Czechoslovak socially democratic politician - Editor's note] was the minister of transport, and we were waving to him as well. It was this agitprop trip. Nitra wasn't on the main railway track. Zbehy were a railway nodal point and so we went to greet Masaryk from Nitra to Zbehy. That was my first train experience. amplified by Masaryk in the train that we were waving at. In my days people's school had five grades. I did four of them, and from fourth grade of people's school I went into high school. The building of the high school was multi- story with a large courtyard.

Before the war the Nitra Jewish community might have had several thousand people [official sources state that in the period before World War II, the Jewish community in Nita was composed of 4,363 people. According to many contemporaries of the time, the number of Jewish inhabitants in the city was higher - Editor's note]. Nitra Jews were mostly concentrated in the city quarter of Parovce, which was the former ghetto. Here there was also the famous Nitra yeshiva [The Nitra yeshiva led by a rabbi named Michael Dov Weissmandl and students that had survived the Holocaust moved in 1946 to the USA, where it exists to this day under the name Yeshiva of Nitra Rabbinical College - Editor's note]. Basically it was poor people living in Parovce. The higher and middle class lived in the center of town. Parovce was mainly very neglected old buildings, the old ghetto. There was also a mikveh [ritual bath - Editor's note] in Nitra. But we didn't go there. I don't even know where exactly it was.

When I reminisce about school days, I can't say much about high school. It doesn't have so much to do with school subjects as that at that time the nationalists were beginning to show their teeth. Those were the main experiences from high school. There were about six Jews in our class, and already there you could feel this certain, you couldn't yet call it anti- Semitism, but this certain tension. Anti-Semitism didn't rear its head until one Sudeten German 29 began teaching us, in 'tercie' [third year], I think. He came to teach Slovak, but he was a German. He was explicitly against us. He asked me: "What do you speak at home?" I said: "Slovak". "You don't speak Slovak, you definitely speak Hungarian!" and he began whacking me over the head with a newspaper. It was already obvious.

But it was in 'kvinta' [fifth year] that the main turning point came. That was in 1939. When the Slovak State already existed. Back then the following happened. We were six Jews in the class, two girls and four boys. In the morning we came to class, and written on the blackboard was the title: Jews! Then followed a long litany of all that we'd caused the Slovak nation and the conclusion "and thus we've designated the following places for you." Originally we'd each been sitting somewhere else, and suddenly they designated that we all sit together. Mendlik, our homeroom teacher, arrived. He was a Czech, and when he saw what was on the blackboard, he became extremely upset. He went to see the principal. He told him that he'd no longer be the home room teach for that class. He protested against it. Most of our high school professors were Czechs. This Mendlik taught us geography. So that's more or less how it started with that school in 1939.

During the war">During the war

I ended school in 'kvinta', in 1939. I was still allowed to attend school for one more year. I could have done 'sexta' [sixth year] but I decided for hakhsharah 30. So I went to hakhsharah, intending to aliyah to the Palestine. The hakhsharah was in the town of Radvan near Banska Bystrica [the town of Radvan was annexed by the city of Banska Bystrica and became one of its city wards - Editor's note]. I was there for one year, and absolved many jobs there. Since then I'm very good at making shoes. So I was a shoemaker. Before that I studied to be a bookbinder, so I also know how to bind books. By the way, later, in the Vyhne camp, I worked in a bagmaking workshop. There we sewed wallets and all sorts of things. I finally graduated from hakhsharah, but I didn't go to the Palestine. At the time it wasn't that organized yet and I myself decided not to go anywhere. Though I was prepared, I was supposed to first go to Denmark. I've got this large crate that was supposed to serve as a suitcase. I've still got it stored away in the cellar. In the end nothing came of it. So I stayed in Slovakia. The first guardian angel saved me when they came for me to our apartment in Nitra in 1942. Back then the non-family transports were going. It was the very first one. So they came to Seminarska Street, where we lived, for me as well. But luckily I was in Jur [Svaty Jur] at the time. We were digging a canal on the Sur River. So my father told the person that had come for me: "Otto Simko isn't here. He's working in Jur." And in this way I actually avoided deportation. That was the first guardian angel.

Once the Gestapo and the Guardists burst into Jur. It was nighttime and we were all sleeping in barracks. They came with the words: "Schweine! Hunde! Ausstehen!" [in German: Swine! Dogs! Get up!]. It was at night, and we got up. They had a list, and took boys away to the transport. At the time I wasn't on their list. But it was a sign for me that I couldn't stay in Jur any more. So I left there and returned back home, to Nitra. By then I wasn't on the list there anymore, so this is how I got through that first danger of the transports. But then, there was this thing, that they took my father to jail, to Ilava! Not as a Jew, but as a social democrat! As a political prisoner to Ilava. The transported my mother, brother and me to a collection camp in Zilina, intending to send us to Auschwitz or to one of the other German concentration camps. But they transferred my father from Ilava, to Zilina as well. That was a horrible meeting! He didn't know that we were there. And when he saw us there, that was very moving both for him and for us. For two months I was in Zilina with my entire family. Then my mother's brother, Rezso, brought a fake baptism certificate. In it, it stood that my father had been converted before 1938, and on the basis of that our entire family went to the Vyhne camp. We were actually the first transport that went through that gate not into cattle cars, but into passenger trains, which then took us to Bzenice, which is the station before Vyhne. Vyhne doesn't have its own station. From there they took us on buses to the Vyhne labor camp. In Vyhne I worked in a bagmaking workshop, where I learned to make wallets, briefcases and similar things.

An interesting thing was when we came from the collection camp, from Zilina, to the Vyhne labor camp. The head of the Jewish camp had us line up, and said in German: "You were all converted before 1938." To this one voice: "Not me, not me!" Everyone stood in shock, wondering who was shouting that. It was a proletarian from Bratislava, Willy Kohn. A notorious Bratislava character. He also got into the Vyhne camp, but not because he'd been converted, but because he had an Aryan wife. Because they were also sending people from mixed marriages there. "I got Aryan wife! I got Aryan wife!" You see, Willy didn't speak Slovak well. He was a Presporker [Prespork, or Pressburg - the German name for Bratislava - Editor's note] and didn't speak Slovak. To that was this first funny incident, gallows humor.

Vyhne was known for having a boss, Gindl, who had this specialty, when someone did something, he got 25 on the whipping horse. He had a whipping horse set up there. A certain Guardist named Ondra used to give out 25 blows. He had this little boat and we called him the little brigadier. But Gindl was then let go, and Leitner arrived. He was a soldier, and he was much more decent. After his arrival the conditions in the camp got a bit better. We were in the Vyhne labor camp for ten months. Then my father got a departmental exception. Back then the minister of justice was a certain Fritz [Dr. Gejza Fritz]. He arranged for him to be employed in Trstena. He was responsible for the Grundbuch [in German: land register - Editor's note]. Polish towns that had fallen under the Slovak State needed to arrange some things in the land registry, and they put him there because of that. We were very glad to be able to leave.

But here's the way it was. Back then the transports weren't running anymore. It was this in-between time. When the transports had ended, and the next ones hadn't started yet. Those who were out, were afraid that they'd take them to Sered, Novaky or to Vyhne, but those who were already in a camp, they were content, because the transports were no longer running. But that Damocles' sword [metaphorically speaking, a symbol of ever-present danger - Editor's note] was still hanging over us. So in that sense it was good that we could leave that camp early. Otherwise, I've got this very interesting document from that camp. I think it's the only one, because labor camps didn't issue documents. The Jewish camp leadership, namely Mr. Wildmann, issued it to me. I had asked him for confirmation that I'd been in that camp. The confirmation sounds typically thought through in a Jewish fashion: "According to legal regulations. We cannot issue you a report regarding your employment in our Jewish labor camp, although during your stay from 18th October1942 to 31st August 1943 you proved very satisfactory in our bagmaking workshop." They gave me a confirmation that says that they can't issue me a confirmation, although you from, to... in a word, I loved that idea. So I'm the only one to have a confirmation from that camp.

From Vyhne I went home, to Nitra. But the times were uncertain. I decided to get a job using so-called Aryan papers. I had a fake birth certificate, on which I didn't even have to change my name. With these papers I got a job as a bookbinder at the Hlavis Company in Liptovsky Mikulas. I went there alone, without my parents and that's where I was when the uprising 17 came along. So I immediately volunteered for the uprising and was a member of the 9th Liptov Partisan Division, in the Liptov Mountains. One thing has remained in my memory above all. There were five Jews in our division. We also slept in one tent, and everyone knew that we were Jews. We felt great during all the missions, as we felt this satisfaction, that now we had rifles in hand. We were no longer persecuted. Now we were equal. In short it was this feeling of amazing rebirth of your own person and also self-confidence.

The most powerful feeling was when one of my Jewish friends, Gabi Eichler, now he's in Israel and is named Gabi Oren, who was the boldest of us all. He was in the town of Vitalisovce at the time. The rest of us were in Zdiarska Dolina [the Zdiar Valley], in a cabin. In Vitalisovce he captured a German officer, and brought him to us in the cabin in Zdiarska Dolina. After a detailed interrogation it was ascertained that he was a guard from Dachau 31, a member of the SS. The result couldn't be anything other than execution. As partisans we couldn't take prisoners along with us. Execution as decided on, and the political commissar, Galica, picked two Jewish boys, me and another one, for the execution. Galica went with us as well. We went with that German up above the cabin, a little ways off, and there we told him to get undressed. We still needed his uniform. I even tried to explain to him in German why he had to die. He reacted: "I know what's going to happen to me. I'm still loyal to Hitler. I don't regret anything. Not even from the concentration camp, what I've done, with Jews. That was my belief, that it's right." In short, he felt to be a member of the SS up to the last moment. He didn't want to regret anything. Of course, for me it was then easier, and even that shot came out easier. I'd never shot anyone from such a close distance before. I shot a person who really did deserve it, when you think about it. Well, and later I almost paid the price for that execution.

Later our partisan division, at the Zdiar cabin, was scattered by the Germans and we had to retreat across the hills to Rohac. One of the Jewish boys, Janko Pressburger, was wounded. Now he lives in the town of Ber Sheva, in Israel. Two of us carried him through the mountains. We lost our unit. We were then hiding out in Pribilina, and I went to Liptovsky Mikulas dressed as a civilian. I knew that the director of the hospital there, Droppa, hid partisans and Jews by pretending that they were patients. My task was to get our wounded friend into the hospital there. Well, in Liptovsky Mikulas I was caught by a Guardist by the name of Kruzliak. He checked my ID, but my papers weren't in order. He began asking questions, who I was, what I was. I had to pull down my pants in front of him. When he saw that I was circumcised, they threw me in jail right away. I was locked up in the local jail. When in the meantime the Germans arrived in Zdiarska Dolina, they exhumed that executed German. In the jail they were investigating what had actually happened, who had done it. Someone gave away the fact that I'd been in that partisan division that had executed him. So they investigated me in connection with the execution. I of course knew that if it came out, I'd be dead. I denied ever having been there. That I'd never even been a partisan and didn't know about it and so on. The beat me a lot, and wanted to get it out of me by force. But at this time my German helped me a lot. One SS soldier said to my interrogator, who was called Barnabas Magat: "I'm not sure about that little guy." By the little guy he of course meant me. They didn't know that I understood German. His doubts about my guilt buoyed me and despite a heavy beating I kept denying it.

In jail it was scabies that helped save me, when I think about it. Because I got scabies, and when the Red Cross arrived, they decided that I have to go to the hospital for treatment. Two militiamen led me at bayonet-point to the hospital for treatment. I told the nurse, when she wanted to take my clothes: "Leave my clothes here. I want to escape. And please, prolong the treatment for as long as possible." That was in December of 1944. So the militiamen waited for me in front of the washroom, and I opened the window and hightailed it away from the hospital. Then I got to Nitra and hid out there in the Mr. Truska's cellar. The way it was, was that I went to see one acquaintance that knew that my father had been a social democrat before. He sent me to another place, and from there they again sent me on. Until finally that Truska took me in. He had a bunker in the cellar, and there were about ten Jews there. All Orthodox Jews. I arrived there, everyone there had a beard, and the first thing they asked me was what was up with the rabbi. But I didn't know what was up with the rabbi.

My father was also in the mountains from the start of the uprising. My mother and grandma were in hiding in Nitra. My brother was also in Nitra in the beginning, but they then took him away. My mother and grandma were saved. They were hidden in the same place. I knew where they were hiding out. I knew that they were alive. We didn't know about my father, just like we didn't know about my brother's further fate. So liberation was actually this bittersweet affair. My father returned. But we were waiting for my brother. That was the worst disappointment.

Post-war">Post-war

Luckily we were able to return to our old apartment. We discovered that the Germans had had a casino in our apartment. The furniture was there, but the neighbors had looted everything else. But the apartment was there, and that was enough for us. We had someplace to come back to. Then also many of those that were returning lived with us, as we were the only ones who had at least some sort of haven. We had enough to be able to live. As soon as we returned to the apartment, I went down to look in the cellar. There were about fifteen people hiding there, because just then they were bombing the city. I was an excellent shelter from the bombing. Well, they were completely horrified when they saw me, because many of them had the things that had been taken from our place. But back then I didn't care about things. I know very well that they were very horrified that I'd returned.

But basically no one took an openly negative stance towards us. My father's position in Nitra was such that no one dared to in some way show some sort of hate, or something similar. Right away he was a people's judge in Nitra. When the people's court began to hold sessions, they didn't want to start anything with us. We also weren't out for revenge. What was important to us was for my brother to return. But that didn't happen. So that's how we survived the war. I had to graduate from high school by taking an accelerated program in Bratislava. After the front I moved to Bratislava. I didn't have anything in common with Nitra anymore. My father and mother stayed in Nitra along with Grandma. Only I was in Bratislava, studying. My father became the chairman of the Regional Court in Zilina. So my parents moved from Nitra to Zilina. In time my father became the chairman of the Regional Court in Bratislava. in 1953 my mother died of cancer, and is buried in Zilina at the Jewish cemetery. She had a proper Jewish funeral.

The Slansky trials 32 didn't affect my father in any special fashion. But something worse affected him. The justice minister was one very well known Jew, by the name of Reis. He was Gottwald's 33 good friend, a Communist. My father was the chairman of the Regional Court in Zilina, and this Reis stripped him of his position of chairman and designated a different person, a worker cadre, who started working there as the chairman of the Regional Court. Back then it wounded my father very much.

After arriving in Bratislava I finished high school by taking an accelerated program, and registered at Comenius University in Bratislava, at the Faculty of Law. So I was a law student. From 1945 to 1949. I got a break, because as a partisan I was credited with one year, or two semesters. So I studied law for only four years. Otherwise, studying law consisted of going to lectures. Some went, some didn't, you just had to pass the exams. I rented a place with two other classmates. Well, and then I finished my studies. Then I got a job at the Commission of Social Affairs. Later, already as a doctor of law, in the legal department. So I was there, but later I then led the education division at the Labor Commission. That lasted until the 'Slanskiade' [the Slansky affair].

Well, then there was that sort of intermezzo, that the Slanskiade had arrived. Suddenly I was working as a lathe operator in Martin. That was in the year 1951. Then I was a teacher in a home for apprentices, as they needed me there. Later I also worked as a 'labcor', or labor correspondent. As a worker I wrote various contributions for Prace 34. As a labcor they sent me for schooling, the fact that I was just by the way already a doctor of law didn't trouble them. But as a labcor, pretty please, I did well and they accepted me onto the staff of the daily paper Smena 35. In 1954 I started working in the offices of Smena in Bratislava. At first I worked in the labor department, then later mainly in the foreign department. I didn't have anything to do with law anymore. Law didn't come in handy until they threw me off the staff of the paper, after Party screenings. In 1971, a couple of years after the arrival of the "brotherly armies" 36, I was thrown off the staff.

Finally I got a job as a company lawyer in one construction company in Bratislava. It was named Staving. Here it finally came in handy that I had studied law. I was a company lawyer, I used to go to meetings. I represented the company against employees. But it always ended well, because I always came to an agreement with the employee. He either withdrew his claim, or we came to some other agreement. I actually worked in Staving up until retirement. I was about 60 when I began working and retired. In retirement I again began writing for newspapers. After the war I never met up with anti-Semitism again. I think that in this respect I've got good experiences, I never had problems of this type.

Before the war I was a Neolog, a normal thing. After liberation, very many Jews, including me, saw a certain solution in leftism, Communism. So I don't have a relationship to Judaism through religion. Which is typical for people of my type, a common fate, past. All this brought me to Judaism, in that now I'm quite active in the B'nai Brith and Hidden Child organizations. So there I found myself. I entered the Jewish religious community in Bratislava about two years ago [i.e. in 2004 - Editor's note]. Even before that I participated in all events, but didn't formally join the community. But then I felt a summons, that I must fulfill this formality as well. Even though with me it has nothing to do with religion.

I'll mention my personal life after the Holocaust only very briefly. Back in those days there used to be company vacations to Bulgaria. From the Labor Commission I also want on vacation to Bulgaria. There I met my wife. She was a medical lab technician in the Tatras, in a sanatorium. For a long time nothing happened, but then it ended up with us getting married. She was named Matilda Podobnikova. She was from the Gemer [region], from a little village named Lubovnik. She was from a family with many children, there were six or seven of them. Her first name was officially Matilda, but everyone called her Mata. They then combined it with the famous Mata Hari [real name: Zelle, Margaretha Geertruida (1876 - 1917): a notorious dancer and courtesan. During World War I she was convicted of espionage and executed - Editor's note] and everyone called her Harina, Harnika or Hari. She wasn't Jewish. No one in her entire family was Jewish. Despite my origins, there wasn't even a pinch, not even a hint of some verbal slip, that they objected to my being a Jew! That was something amazing, as far as their relationship to Jews went. I really did find a family where it played absolutely no role.

Matilda and I were married in 1954 in Bratislava. Just at city hall. She worked in the Tatras, even when we were married. I worked for the paper in Bratislava. Then Matilda came to live in Bratislava. At first we lived in hotels, we didn't get an apartment until later. In the meantime my father and grandma moved here. They rented a place, finally they came to an agreement with the owner, and bought the apartment from him. My wife and I lived there with our little daughter who'd been born in the meantime, with my father and my grandmother. My wife died in 1996. She was five years older than me.

My wife and I had one daughter. She was born exactly two years after our wedding in 1956, and we named her Dasa. Dasa wasn't brought up in the spirit of Jewish traditions. She knows who her father is, and what fate befell his entire family. My wife and I didn't observe any Jewish customs. We had a normal household. I continued to be inclined towards Judaism, but only alone. I didn't lead my daughter to it.

My grandma died at the age of 100. That was in 1971, and that was a period when she couldn't have a Jewish funeral, and is buried in Slavicie Udolie. My grandmother, who would have deserved it the most, didn't have a Jewish wedding. My father died in 1976, also here in Bratislava. He also had a civil funeral, and his ashes are scattered over the scattering meadow of the crematorium in Bratislava.

Because I'd been thrown off the staff of Smena, they didn't want to accept my daughter into university. She wanted to be a pharmacist. So at first she went to Prague, into a so-called zeroth year. Then they just barely accepted her into mechanical engineering, but she was there only a half semester. They then accepted her to the Faculty of Chemistry, where she was for about six semesters, but she said that she wouldn't work. so they finally gave her Russian and Bulgarian at university. There she even completed a doctorate and worked on Russian-Slovak and Bulgarian-Slovak dictionaries at the Language Sciences Institute. Currently she's working with schola ludus [schola ludus: a civic society whose main goal is the support and systematic development of lifelong, informal education, mainly in the sphere of natural sciences, the support of scholastic education in the sphere of general scientific and technical literacy - Editor's note], that's this one organization where they educate children in physics and chemistry.

Her husband is the actor Petr Simun from the Astorka Theater. Recently I attended one amazing performance, Eve of Retirement. It's a symphony of acting, playing in it were Kronerova, Simun and Furkova. Though there were only three actors on stage, but it was worth it! It's all on a Jewish theme. The play is very successful. My daughter has two children. My grandson is named Palko [Pavol] and my granddaughter Barborka [Barbora]. We see each other almost every day. They come here, then I go see them. In short, as if we lived together.

In retirement I make use of my free time and enjoy life. Four times a week I go swimming, which is a good thing. I inherited these sports activities of mine from my mother. She also had an all-around talent for sports. Until recently I also used to go skating. Of course, I also devote myself to cultural events. I have enough time, so I try to use it to the fullest. For suffering during the Holocaust, I get compensation monthly, and also something from the Claims Conference. But I've got to say, that given my modest lifestyle, I don't have these types of problems.

Glossary">Glossary

Viera Slesingerova
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Pavla Neuner
Date of interview: January 2004

I met with Mrs. Slesingerova in her cozy apartment overlooking the Vltava River. The house in which she lives is located directly on the embankment in the historic quarter of the city and is surrounded by many historic buildings, such as the famous Convent of St. Agnes. Mrs. Slesingerova comes across as a dignified and educated lady. The interview was carried out in a very pleasant atmosphere.

Family background">Family background

My paternal grandfather was called Ignac Pollak and my maternal grandmother was called Julie Pollakova, nee Steinerova. I don't know when and where they were born, but I do know that they lived in Klatovy, where my grandfather owned a house with a wholesale coal and liquor store. My grandfather was a great Czech patriot and Sokol 1 member,member; hence they spoke Czech at their house. As to how religious he was, my grandfather was a traditional Czech assimilated Jew. I never knew him, because he died before I was born, when he was in his seventies. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Klatovy, where he was the first to get a tombstone with an inscription in Czech. I know nothing about my maternal grandmother, as she died when she was young, when my dad was about eighteen.

My grandfather on my mother's side was called Bernat Paszternak. He evidently had a religious education and he lived with my grandmother in Kosice, where he was a shammash. He was a very nice person, tall with gray hair. They always spoke Hungarian in my mom's family, so I used to call my grandfather 'aranyszoke' [Hungarian for 'golden-haired'] granddad. I was very fond of him. My grandmother was called Berta Paszternakova, nee Schon and was a Hungarian Jew. Both grandparents were very religious. They kept a kosher household and my grandmother wore a wig, but they were tolerant towards my parents. Although the food was not kosher in our house, they still ate it and slept over whenever they came for a visit. After getting married, my dad had kidney failure once and the doctor said that my mom would have to cut out all kosher food, unless she wanted to kill him. My devout grandparents accepted this. I remember the Friday evenings that they spent at our place. My grandfather would always bless me, before going to the synagogue. My granddad was apparently very strict as a father, but he was very kind to me. My mom always said that my grandmother was so good- natured that she could never bring herself to give her children a smack, even when they were being unbearably naughty. My grandmother died of cancer in 1936 and my grandfather died about three months later. My grandmother was over seventy, my grandfather over eighty. They both had a Jewish burial.

My dad was called Otto Pollak and he was born in 1884 in Klatovy. He studied law, but didn't become a lawyer. After World War I he worked as a state official in Slovakia. [Editor's note: After World War I, when the Czechoslovak state was founded Czech bureaucrats were sent to the previously Hungarian Slovakia to replace the Hungarian state officials.] He was head of the revenue office and as such was constantly being transferred from place to place, so we often moved house. During World War I, my dad was enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army [KuK Army] 2. He never talked about this much, but I know that he was on the Italian Front 3 for a while. He probably had a commission, because he was given his own orderly. My dad went to the synagogue on the high holidays, but he wasn't devout. His mother tongue was Czech and he came from a large assimilated Czech Jewish family, so my grandfather was not too happy when my dad fell in love with my mum, a poor Hungarian Jewess.

My dad was a person of few words, as I am. My husband used to say to me that our daughter says more in a day than I do in a year. And my dad spoke even less. One of my aunts always used to say to my mom, 'Are there any pliers here?' 'What for?' 'To get a word out of him!' My dad was a very proper, strict man. It was as if he had been born a state official. When we lived in Zilina, our apartment was in the very house where my dad's office was. From time to time I would go to see him in his office. He had a long desk there on which I liked to play ping pong. One day I rushed in and saw a man there who was trying to persuade my dad to join the Agrarian Party. That was the strongest party at the time, but my dad couldn't get politically involved in any major way, as he was a state official, so he was never in any party. He was an honest and incorruptible official. I heard that he was offered bribes to do things, but he always turned such things down as being completely out of the question.

My dad was strict with me at home, but after his death I came to realize how little one can ever know about other people. I know that he was very fond of me, I was everything to him and he would do anything for me, but he was never able to show it like mom did. My dad didn't cuddle me as much as mom did, but he liked it when I came up to him and sat in his lap. He had all kinds of hobbies. I remember that he enjoyed dancing and, later on, he played bridge and liked to go fishing, especially for trout. When he was into dancing, I apparently used to get a chair ready so that he could try out his dance steps when he came home from the office. Photography was another one of his great hobbies.

My mom was called Helena Pollakova, nee Paszternak. She was born in 1896 in a small village near Kosice called Buzita [Buzita is the Hungarian name of the village, officially today the Slovak version 'Buzica' is used.]. She had a secondary school education, probably with a focus on commerce. My mom was a nice, pretty woman. In her youth she had one great love, whowhich was called Arpad. He came from a Jewish family, which was probably wealthier than my mom's, because his parents weren't in favor of their relationship, even though it was a great love. Arpad had to promise his father on his death bed that he wouldn't marry her, so they had to break up. My mom spoke about him from time to time and used to say that the nicest thing about their relationship was that it would never end, because it had never been fulfilled. We met Arpad once in Marianske Lazne 4. My mom always used to say that he was very unhappy, because he had no children with the woman he had married.

My parents met in Kosice. They spoke German together, for dad didn't speak Hungarian and mom didn't speak Czech or Slovak. My dad must have been very much in love, because his father also came out against their relationship. When my parents were to get married, my dad sent his father a letter which made clear his intentions, and attached to it a photo of mom. My mom was a beautiful woman, but not at all photogenic. He got a letter back complaining that not only was she Hungarian, but that she was also from a very religious family and that she was so ugly that he would disinherit him if they ever got married. So their love for each other must have been great. Afterwards, it occurred to dad that mom could try writing to my grandfather, because she knew how to write well. In response to this letter, my grandfather wrote that he couldn't come to the wedding himself but that he was sending dad's brother Pavel. It was a Jewish wedding. Shortly afterwards, mom was then invited to Klatovy and when she came, there was a great reception. When they were walking along the street, my grandfather said to her, 'Helena, either you will speak Czech or you will be quiet.' Later on, mom actually learnt to speak Czech very well. She made spelling mistakes, but spoke with such a good accent that she was considered to be Czech.

My mom was a housewife. She did the shopping and cooking, as dad came home for lunch. She always had a maid to help her out. In the afternoons she would knit, crochet and make covers, which she enjoyed doing. She also enjoyed having company, visiting friends and going to cafes with dad. My parents longed to have a child, but it was four years into the marriage before I was born. My mom had been going to Frantiskovy Lazne [spa in western Bohemia founded in 1793, famous for curing women diseases], where they treated women with fertility problems.

My paternal grandparents had four children - my dad, daughter Hermina, and sons Pavel and Jaroslav. Jaroslav was disabled due to an injury sustained in World War I and remained single. He didn't survive World War II.

Uncle Pavel married a Jewish woman called Betynka, with whom he had a daughter, Zdenicka, who was a year older than me. They perished in a concentration camp.

Aunt Hermina married a non-Jew, Dr. Reznicek, who was a high school teacher. They had two sons together, Milek and Zdenek, both of whom were sent to do forced labor. Milek escaped across the border to Switzerland, where he was initially arrested and was extremely lucky not to be sent back. He then got to England, where he went through pilot training, although he never got to fly. My uncle was held in a labor camp for non- Jewish partners of Jewish women. Aunt Hermina stayed in their small house, which they sublet to a young woman who was having an affair with a Gestapo man and who later informed on my aunt for listening to foreign radio stations. Hermina was then incarcerated in the Small Fortress 5 at Terezin. Milek and Zdenek emigrated in 1948, at first staying with friends in Belgium, where they put in applications at different embassies. The first to reply was the Bolivian Embassy. Apparently, they learnt to speak Spanish on the voyage over to Bolivia. In addition, they spoke Italian, German and French, because their father was a classic philologist with knowledge of many languages. Before the war, my uncle used to take the boys on vacation abroad. Although they went together, they each stayed at a different place, which was how the boys learnt languages.

My mom came from a large, religious family and had nine brothers and sisters - Izidor, the oldest, Serena, Koloman, Irma, Charlota, Ilona, Alzbeta, Mikulas, Marie. [In Hungarian: Izidor, Szerena, Kalman, Irma, Sarolta, Ilona, Erzsebet, Miklos and Maria. At the time most probably these were their official names registered in their documents with this spelling; being Hungarian speakers it is most likely that they used these names informally within the family later on too even though officially their names may have changed.] Most of her siblings lived in various places in Slovakia and were far less religious than their parents.

Before the outbreak of World War I, Izidor left for America, where he died at the end of the war. I know that he had three children - two boys who are no longer alive and a daughter who is still living in America. I met her there in the 1990s.

Serena was the only one of my mom's siblings who was very religious. She married Mr. Weiss, with whom she had two sons, Laci [diminutive for Laszlo] and Sandor. The whole family was deported to Auschwitz. Apart from Laci, none of them survived the Holocaust. Laci emigrated to Israel after the war.

Koloman worked in a bank. He was a frivolous person who sometimes had financial worries. He married an extremely talkative woman called Erzi [Erzsi, diminutive for Erzsebet, Alzbeta in Slovakian], with whom he had a son, Pista [diminutive for Istvan], my cousin. Pista went to a Slovak high school and, during the war, was sent to a labor camp in Hungary, from where he was then transported to a concentration camp. On the train journey, the guards made it be known that the prisoners were to be shot at the camp. Three of them escaped, including Pista. He got as far as Budapest, where he somehow managed to get a German uniform, in which he was later caught by the Russians who wanted to shoot him. He explained to them that he was a Jew who was wearing the uniform, as he had just escaped. As the officer who was interrogating him had a Jewish orderly, he got Pista to sing a Hebrew prayer to him to see if he really was a Jew. Pista had a beautiful voice and, what's more, came from a Jewish family, so he broke out in song, which saved his life. Afterwards, he lived in Hungary under the Hungarian name Perenyik and died at the age of about 70. He had one son.

Irma left for America before World War I. She married there and had one son. She lived in Brooklyn.

Charlota got married to a Jewish farmer called Kertesz [his family name was Kertesz], who had a farm in Hungary, not far from Miskolc. I saw very little of her, for it was a great distance in those days. They had two children, a son called Laci and a daughter called Pimpi [Pimpi is a nick name, does not correspond to any known Hungarian name]. Charlota was an amusing person. Apparently she came home late once and my grandfather got annoyed. Charlota told him it was ten o'clock, but then the clock struck one and my grandfather said, 'What are you talking about?' Charlota said, 'Well, it can't strike the zero.' All her family perished.

Ilona married and became Mrs. Kleinova, but didn't have any children. She lived in Kosice where she ran a powder and cosmetics factory with her husband. Neither of them survived the Holocaust.

Aunt Alzbeta was my favorite aunt. Before getting married, she graduated from a commercial high school. She worked and lived with us in Bratislava, as we had a large apartment there at the time. She then married a Jewish traveling salesman called Viliam Schaffer. Her husband wasn't home very often, due to the nature of his job, so she used to stay at our place. I loved her very much and was very close to her. She was very witty. I knew my mom's side of the family the most. Dad's sister, Aunt Hermina, was once staying over at our place when Aunt Alzbeta came along. When dad brought her in, I ran up to her with joy, as I always did. Afterwards, mom told me off for never greeting Aunt Hermina in the same way. Aunt Alzbeta always had health problems. She loved children and in 1939 became pregnant, but because of the war she didn't want to have a child, so she gave it away. During the war, Alzbeta and her husband were in a camp in Novaky 6 and during the Slovak Uprising 7 they hid out in the mountains. They both survived the war. They didn't have any children later on.

After the war, I put on a lot of weight for a while and when Aunt Alzbeta came to see me in Prague, she said to me in Hungarian, 'Roll over to me'. She and her husband then decided to go to Israel. She wanted me to go with her, but by then I was in love with my future husband. At first they found it hard to get by. My uncle then got a decent job as a state official, but my aunt went to work as a maid. Afterwards, my uncle who, unlike my aunt had been as fit as a fiddle all his life, had a heart attack and within an hour she had lost him. She came to visit us some time in the 1960s, when such visits were slightly possible. I was overjoyed to see her. My husband tried to persuade her to stay here, as she was living alone in Israel. But she said she couldn't, as her husband's grave was over there. Later on, she spent a year with her sister Irma in America, but she didn't want to stay there, either. She died in Israel in 1991.

Mikulas was the youngest of my mom's brothers and he served in the Czechoslovak army. He worked for an insurance agency. He got married and had a son called Tom who perished in the Holocaust, as did his wife Vera. When Hungary occupied Kosice [see First Vienna Decision] 8, some time in 1939-40, Mikulas was incarcerated as a Communist. Afterwards, he apparently looked so terrible that not even his own family could recognize him. He then had to dig trenches on the front until the end of the war [see Working Battalion] 9. After the war, he married again, but didn't have any children with his second wife, Magda. He died soon afterwards of a heart attack.

Marie never married, for she was very choosy and never liked anyone enough, which annoyed her sisters. She was a cheerful woman, though. At first she lived in Kosice, later she moved to Ruthenia [Subcarpathia] 10 for work. She perished in Auschwitz.

Growing up">Growing up

Czech was spoken at our place, because my dad was a Czech. My mom was Hungarian, though, and when her sisters came to visit, they spoke Hungarian together, which my dad didn't understand at all. I was very curious to know what my aunts were saying, and I can remember standing by the window, writing down in capital letters the words I heard. I learnt the language by listening this way, although I never had a great command of the grammar.

We didn't eat kosher food at home, as we had Hungarian-Czech cuisine, such as dumplings, stuffed peppers, gnocchi with sheep's cheese and plum dumplings. Festive meals were held on Sunday, because dad worked on Saturdays. On Friday mom lit candles, but we went to the synagogue only on the high holidays. On Yom Kippur we fasted and on Pesach I always went with my mom to my grandparents in Kosice. I can remember, as the youngest, saying the mah nishtanah, and I translated it into Slovak as I had learnt it in religion lessons. This made the rest of the family laugh a lot. I can also remember how I stood in a sukkah during Sukkot and started whistling to myself, whereupon my grandfather got very angry and told me that whistling wasn't allowed in a sukkah. I have a horrifying recollection of Yom Kippur. On the eve of the holiday, I had to pray with a hen in my hand, and with mom's help I swung it over my head in order to sacrifice it for my sins. To this day I can remember the hen flapping its wings and mom helping me to hold it by its legs and calming me down. This custom was called kapores.

I was an only child, well-loved and pampered, not only by my parents but especially by my mom's large family. On the whole I was a good child, except for not eating well. When I was five, my parents put me in a sanatorium for children with eating disorders in Vienna. We went there from Bratislava by train in the winter. At Christmas we had a tree and presents that parents had sent their children. I was the only one who didn't have a present under the tree, whereupon I proudly announced that this wasn't because my parents didn't like me, but because we were Jewish. One of the doctors then brought a toy car from somewhere and gave it to me. Christmas wasn't celebrated at our place, but we always went out to look at Christmas trees. I liked the trees very much, but I was never sorry that we didn't have one.

Because of my dad's job we moved house many times when I was a child. We moved from Kosice when I was still a baby. We went through Martin and Trnava, but I was too young to remember much about it. My first memories are of Bratislava, where I started to go to elementary school. The school was known as a training school, as teacher trainees did their teaching practice there. I can remember one teacher, Mr. Musil, who introduced what was then known as the global method, and even wrote some books about it. According to this method we learned to read words straight away, instead of reading by syllables. My dad was very unhappy about that, because he was convinced that you could never learn to read like that. There were also problems with writing, because the way they did it was to start with slanting lines. I can remember learning about Czech spelling with my dad whose voice always used to falter towards the end. The teacher I liked in the second grade was Mrs. Chrenkova. In the third grade I went to a Jewish elementary school in Zilina. I can remember the teachers there: Goldberger, Salg and Brunner. It was a very good school which was also attended by non- Jewish children.

I then went to a high school in Zilina, which I attended until the start of the third year. We then moved to Presov, but we only stayed there for half a year. The only difference between Bratislava and Zilina was that Bratislava was a much busier town. The difference between Zilina and Presov was much greater, however, for Presov was in the east. The girls at the school there spoke Saris dialect that I didn't understand. [Saris designates the area around Presov (it originates from Saros county before 1920). The Slovak dialect spoken there includes lots of Polish words.] The Jewish girls came mostly from religious families and wore stockings and long skirts. In the center of Presov there was only one attractive main street.

In Presov I made friends with Miluse Preiningerova, who was a Czech non- Jewish girl whose father was serving there as an officer. I had both Jewish and non-Jewish friends, as did my parents. A lot of my dad's friends were Czech officials. My mom knew slightly different people, so it was all nicely mixed. I found it hard to make friends, as it takes me quite a long time to get to know people, and it was difficult for me with all that moving about. In Zilina I made friends with Duca Robinsonova and she has remained a friend to this day. Her parents had a house with a garden where we spent a lot of time. We went skating in winter and swimming in summer. I collected photographs of actors in an album. In those days, they used to give out two-page programs with film synopses, which I also collected, with the help of Aunt Alzbeta.

The apartments in which we lived were set aside for the heads of revenue offices, so they were all very nice. In Presov we lived in an old palace. The dining area was in a huge room, but we didn't use it very much because it was hard to keep warm. We had a wood-burning stove, as there was plenty of wood in Slovakia, and it created a beautiful, pure heat with a nice scent. We always had a maid at home, and in Presov an assistant at dad's office, Mr. Borodac, helped out by bringing wood and doing whatever was necessary. We also had dogs - two fox terriers, but they both died - and then we had a canary for a long time. In 1938 I got a Maltese pinscher puppy, but I had to return him when we moved to Bohemia.

My mom used to read a lot. We didn't have Hungarian books, so mom would borrow one from time to time, but mostly she read in German, especially [Franz] Werfel, [Thomas] Mann and [Stefan] Zweig 11. She didn't read many books in Czech, but she liked Capek 12 and 'Golet in the Valley' [novel by Ivan Olbracht (1882-1952): Czech prose-writer and journalist]. My dad read much less. In one room we had a library with the kind of literature and collected works that people from the better families were 'supposed to have'. We took the furniture with us when we moved, but all I now have from the apartment is a carpet.

In our free time we often went for walks, as we didn't have a car. When my dad got into fishing, we would go to the river and then eat trout, if he caught any. My dad had four weeks off, so we also went on vacation. Sometimes we would go to a spa, usually Marianske Lazne, and sometimes my parents went off on their own, leaving me at my grandparents' place in Kosice or with Aunt Hermina in Klatovy. I also went on trips with mom around Slovakia, traveling to Piestany, Trencianske Teplice and the Tatras. For a long time we were planning to go to the seaside in Yugoslavia, but then the war broke out.

We left Slovakia as all Czech state officials had to return to Bohemia. My dad was supposed to have taken office in Prague, but as this was just after the Nazi occupation [see Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia] 13, he didn't. He received a basic salary but was no longer employed. When we were moving, Slovak guardsmen checked all out furniture that we were sending to Prague, to see if we were smuggling anything. That was very unpleasant. Otherwise I didn't encounter any specific manifestation of anti-Semitism directed against me before the war. All I can remember is an incident on a train when I was traveling with my mom from Zilina to see my grandparents in Kosice. We were sitting in a compartment with a man who was calling Jews names. He talked about how young Jewish women were all made up and such like. He then said to my mom who, as I mentioned earlier, spoke Czech without an accent, 'You, dear lady, look like a modest Czech woman.' In reply, mom said, 'Yes, and I am Jewish.' The man then stood up and went straight out of the compartment.

We toyed with the idea of emigrating. My parents put in an application for a US visa, but unfortunately our relatives abroad were not wealthy enough to speed things up in any way. My parents wanted to send me away. I know that they made arrangements with someone in England and that they wanted to send me off to do a nursing course. But when the war broke out in September, my mom was to have an operation and I didn't want to leave her on her own, and after that it wasn't possible to go anywhere.

I completed the fourth grade at the high school on Lobkowicz Square in Prague, but then said I wouldn't stay on because of the anti-Semitism that was prevalent there. Perhaps I judged them unfairly back then. It was a time when children were arriving from Slovakia and the Sudetenland 14, and the classes were crammed full, so the teachers must have been in over their heads. When I look back, I feel that I felt bad myself at having to leave Slovakia, which was a huge change for me. I joined the class in March and the 1939/40 school year was already over in June. I didn't even have time to make any friends, and besides there were only boys in the class, apart from me and another girl. I must have sensed some kind of general anti-Semitism, but I can't remember anything specific. I can even remember a fellow-pupil having a Jewish funeral, at which our class teacher spoke. That was in 1939, when the remains of Karel Hynek Macha were brought over to Prague and put on display at the National Museum. [Macha, Karel Hynek (1810-1836): Czech poet and prose-writer, the most noted representative of Czech Romanticism and founder of modern Czech poetry.] There were visits by school to see them, including one by our class. As we were going down Slezska Street, a former classmate who had left the school - probably because his parents were about to emigrate - was riding his bike opposite us on the road. The boys started to shout at him, and he turned round to see us but crashed headfirst into a truck. He died on the spot.

A year after I left high school I would have been prohibited from attending anyway [see Exclusion of Jews from schools in the Protectorate] 15. I then attended a yearly English language course at the Modern Language Institute, where the classes were separated to Jewish and non-Jewish, which was very pleasant for me as we were among ourselves there and felt that nobody would turn up their nose at us. I had taken private French lessons with Mrs. Fabryova in Slovakia. I excercised on the music but I didn't go to Maccabi 16 or Sokol, for I didn't like group sports or the smell of the changing rooms.

During the war">During the war

From 1940 onwards I took an apprenticeship with a hat-making firm on Wenceslas Square. I made friends there with a Jewish girl called Dita. She was tall and blonde, a beautiful girl. I was small, so I would say to her for fun, 'Dita, everything is fine, but we won't walk on the street together.' I met her after the war. She knew my friends, so she told me about them.

In September 1941 we were moved out of our apartment in Vinohrady to Rybna Street. I can remember there being a bar downstairs in the house. We were moved into an apartment together with four other Jewish families. A month later we were assembled at the Trade Fair grounds in Prague and then deported to Lodz 17. We didn't have any roots in Prague. Neither did we have any proper friends who could have done something to prevent us from being selected for the second transport. I can remember arriving in the ghetto at Lodz, which was a completely different world. Later on, I would often say that it was clear that they sent people to die there but incomprehensible that people lived there.

The ghetto was established in the suburbs of Lodz, in the area known as Baluty. According to my Polish friends, it was originally inhabited by the Lumpenproletariat. They said that wherever a thief was caught in the past, he probably came from Baluta. There was no sewerage system there. A tram went through the middle of the ghetto. It was quite common for a person to work in one part of the ghetto and live in the other. In certain areas there were guards who opened gates at crossing points when people gathered together to get from one side to the other. There was also a wooden bridge over the road for the trams. We were given minimum rations. People cooked for themselves, but the problem was a lack of food and coal, which was why there were common places where people went to heat up their water or to cook. It was called 'Gaskueche' or 'Gaspunkt' [German for 'gaskitchen' and 'gaspoint']. I can remember how people always wrapped their warm pots in covers so that the food would still be a bit warm by the time they got home. As there was a shortage of burners, people had to wait in line, which naturally led to arguments and people pushing in.

After arriving in the ghetto we were placed in a school in Lagevnicka Street. There were several bunk beds in a shared room, but some people were sleeping on the floor. We were lucky to get a bunk bed. On one side were the Wertheimers, on the other the Hahns, who were either emigrants from the Sudetenland or German Germans, because they spoke German.

I couldn't eat the first bowl of soup we were given. Outside there were dirty, impoverished people who were waiting for us to give them that pigswill. So I went down with my mess-tin and when I got back, I was very unhappy and terribly ashamed as I felt disgusted by those people and that I had no right to feel this way. It was at that moment that Dr. Hahn quoted Kant [Immanuel (1724-1804), German philosopher], I think. He said words to the effect that a good deed is worth more when we overcome our distaste at the same time. This helped me very much back then. So, various people lived in one heap. The living conditions were dire and there was no sign of things getting better. The news that went around among the inmates only increased their fears. Hunger led to animosity and mutual incriminations. A huge advantage of mine was that I had never been a big eater, so with my frail physique, I didn't suffer from hunger as much as my mom and dad.

My mom remembered that a Jewish soldier from Lodz used to come to our place for food during World War I, so she tried to find him in the ghetto. In doing so, she met some people who took us into their tiny little apartment. They came from Lodz and helped us, although there was obviously a certain antagonism between Polish and Czech Jews. Just as soon as transports came from Czechoslovakia and other countries, the Germans started to move the locals out. And they felt that not only were we depriving them of their meager rations, but that they also had to leave on account of us. Furthermore, the relationship of western Jews towards those from the east had always been a bit dismissive.

Poles were not the only ones to be evacuated, however, for many people from the Prague transports ended their lives in the extermination camp of Chelmno [in Poland]. Among them was my dad's cousin, Dr. Emil Benes, who was with us on the transport train from Prague. He couldn't bear the oppressiveness and horror of the ghetto - in general, men found it harder to endure everything. He voluntarily put his name forward for deportation in 1942. He was a very sensitive and educated person who loved Prague and Czech literature. I can remember him in the ghetto showing me a folded piece of paper that had turned yellow with age and on which was typewritten Petr Bezruc's poem 'Only Once'. [Bezruc, Petr pseudonym of Vladimir Vasek (1867-1958): Czech poet, called the bard of Silesia, known for his 'Silesian Songs'.] Ordinary people who were alone did not have the strength to struggle on. I can remember a young, very pretty girl who came on our transport train. She couldn't endure such a life from the very outset, when we were living in the shared billet, so she threw herself into a wire fence and was shot. Another thing I can never forget is the public execution of two people who had been caught trying to escape. It was in the winter, and we all had to gather on Baluty Square to witness the execution.

The second thing that mom managed to do was to get us a room of our own in a house on Mlynarska Street. The house was obviously without a sewage system and the toilets were outside. Our room was on the first floor. There was a kitchen and two plank beds, as well as our cases and a stove. An elderly couple lived in the kitchen and I can remember the shock when the lady brushed the bugs off the bed in the morning. Whenever something like that happened for the first time, you always felt it couldn't happen to you.

My mom also managed to find work for us all. Having work meant having some hope of survival. I worked at the 'Leder und Sattler Ressort' [German for 'Leather and Saddlery section'], which was involved in saddle-making. My mom also worked there, but in a different building. She was in the storeroom, while I worked on a trestle, where I sewed together small pieces of leather. I have fond memories of the time I spent there, because I made some wonderful friends. They were young Polish Jews, mostly around my age. It was thanks to them that I regained my purpose in life, which I had completely lost before. I was the only Czech among them, so I learnt to speak Polish very well. We were great idealists in those terrible conditions, for we often spoke about what the world would be like in the future. We helped each other out a lot. It was a matter of course that we shared things with whoever fell sick. I can remember Hana Chlopicka. She was a nice girl, and when she was sick, we each gave her at least some of our rations. She died of quick consumption. So did Honza Abeles, a friend of mine from Prague. I saw him from time to time and we always said to each other that nobody would believe what we had gone through. Once he whistled at me from a courtyard, and when I came down I couldn't recognize him. He died shortly afterwards.

The worst time was always when they were getting ready for displacement, or 'wysiedlenie' as it was called. Nobody knew who would be selected. When the time came, one part of the ghetto was sealed off, which came to be known as the 'Sperre' [German for 'barrier'].this came to be known as the 'Sperre' [German for 'barrier']. This part was then surrounded, people had to get out of their apartments and appear before the SS-men who then selected who to leave and who to take. I can remember two such displacements. Once there was complete silence in the house as everybody had run away, and I told my dad that we, too, should get away. But dad didn't want to, as he thought it wasn't possible to escape, when the order was given to stay where we were. Later on, my mom and I managed to persuade him. In this instance, however, it was in fact impossible for us to escape, so we had to go down to the street. It was always said that the Germans mostly went for gray-haired people with glasses. My dad was 58 years old, had gray hair and wore a beard and glasses. So, I blackened his beard and hair with something and I went first, followed by mom with dad behind. I can remember a moment when I turned round and saw them stand behind me, which meant that we had managed to go through the Sperre. So, we managed to survive until 1944.

Some time in the summer of 1944 the word started to get round in official places that the entire ghetto would be relocated. This could have meant anything. My dad was unable to walk at the time, as he was suffering from muscle deficiency. He stayed at home while mom and I went to work. On 11th August 1944 I stayed behind at work, as usual, because I was having a chat with my friends. Suddenly my mom appeared and to this day I can still hear her voice, as she said to me, 'Viera, something terrible has happened, your dad has committed suicide.' After putting his cover to one side so as not to stain it with blood, my dad had slit his veins. He left a letter in which he wrote that he did it because he would have been in our way when the time came to escape. Afterwards, it wasn't possible to go out to work, so me and my mom started hiding in attics. Among the young people of Lodz, there was a kind of resistance organization, which was structured in such a way that its members only knew the closest people involved. The main idea was for everybody to try and hold out for as long as possible. Later, my mom said that she couldn't stay in hiding any longer. Naturally, I didn't want to leave her alone, so we were deported together to the concentration camp Auschwitz.

We arrived in Auschwitz in August 1944. We got off the cattle cars to the roar of "Los! Los!" [German for 'get moving'] and then we went through the selection. I was shocked by everything and didn't at all realize what it meant when my mom went to the other side during the selection. At first, I went through the usual procedure of having my hair cut off and shaved and then I was given some rags. Nobody believed what in fact was going on in Auschwitz. When we went between the wire fences to have our hair cut off, still looking relatively normal, there were shaved people behind the fence who were jumping around and shouting at us, 'Throw us your bread, throw us everything you have, they'll take it off you anyway.' Somebody then said to me, 'Well, it can't be so terrible here if they keep loonies.' None of us realized that in half an hour we would look just the same. I was sent to camp C. The block where I was placed was inhabited mostly by Poles from Lodz, as well as some Hungarians. The head of the block was a Polish Jewish woman, who had emigrated to Israel [then Palestine] and had been visiting relatives in Poland at the outbreak of war. Her family was in Israel, but she wasn't able to return there.

It's impossible to describe fall and winter in Auschwitz. We walked around in clogs on our bare feet. Clogs would get stuck in the mud and you couldn't lift your foot when that happened. They also tore your skin until it bled. Each of us knew what it was to fight over soup or over who would get an extra potato. We didn't go to work; we just waited to see if we would be picked for work or sent to the gas chamber. People still didn't really believe what was actually happening in Auschwitz. I can remember one day that was quite nice, when we were sitting outside and chatting. We spoke about what had happened to those who went to the other side during the selection. I can remember one Orthodox Jewish woman from Slovakia. What saved her when she arrived in Auschwitz was that her mother, by coincidence, was holding her child. I can remember her saying repeatedly, 'I don't believe there are gas chambers here and that they burn people. If I don't see my mother with my son, there is no God.' And that was somebody for whom God was the meaning of life.

After three months in Auschwitz, I was picked during a roll-call and taken away in a cattle car, along with some other people. I didn't know what would happen. We traveled two or three days in the cattle cars until we reached Mezimesti near Broumov in Bohemia. At the time it was called Halbstadt. We got out of the cattle cars at night, so that nobody would see us. We were lucky in that they hadn't had time to build a labor camp for us, so we were billeted in a weaving mill. Not far away was a camp for forced laborers from Alsace-Lorraine who had refused to profess allegiance to Germany. [The French province was occupied by German troops in 1940 and was attached to the Reich.]

There were 600 of us, mostly Polish women, but also some Hungarians and a few Czechs. Initially, I did mechanical work at a machine, which was unpleasant, because ugly thoughts run through your head when you do automatic work like that. But then my knowledge of languages came in handy, as it had done on several previous occasions. One of the girls was having an affair with one of the French forced laborers and he had taken her on as an assistant, so I was able to interpret for them. He wanted to repay me in some way, so he asked if I had ever been interested in machines. I said I hadn't. He then asked if I at least understood machines, and again I said no. So he then took a milling machine apart in front of me and told me to put it together again. I would probably still be putting it together to this day. However, he was about as concerned for the victory of the Reich as I was, so he took me on as his assistant. Working in shifts, it helped me a lot that I didn't have to sit and think all the time. Our supervisors were SS-women, and the person in charge of us was a German Jewish woman called Jutta. As we were always doing something wrong, the supervisors kept threatening to send us back to Auschwitz. I can remember people from Alsace arriving in January 1945 who told us, 'Well they may as well send you to Auschwitz now.' They had a radio in the camp, you see, so we found out that Auschwitz had fallen. [Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops on 27th January 1945.]

Post-war">Post-war

We stayed in Mezimesti until May 1945. I recall that they locked us in and kept threatening to blow us up, so we were afraid of going to sleep. From the windows we could see the Germans running away in an attempt to get to the Americans. After the departure of the Germans and just before the arrival of the Russians, a group of Frenchmen burst in with a sack of sugar from a nearby sugar refinery. They broke down the door and shouted out, 'Das Judenlager ist frei' [German for 'The Jewish camp is free']. It was the most beautiful moment of liberation. Nobody had known about our camp in Broumov. Jutta, another girl and I went to Broumov, to ask for some help there. In the village they gaped at us in total surprise, not knowing where we had come from or that a camp had been there. This was in the Sudetenland. I can also remember the arrival of the Russians, with red flags fluttering everywhere, the swastikas having been cut off.

I knew that my parents were no longer alive, so I started thinking about what to do next. I was afraid to go home, so I decided to go back with the Polish girls to Poland. Then, one day, a Czech truck came for sugar. There was a Czech gendarme who was sitting inside, so I asked him where they were going and if they could take me with them. They agreed to take me, so I went to say goodbye to the girls. When I met them over forty years later in Israel, they told me that they could still see me as I left them and headed off for the truck. When I got on, the Czech gendarme said to me, 'Well, little girl, how old are you?' I said I was twenty-one, but he didn't believe me. 'Go on, you can tell the truth, you have nothing to fear.'

We got as far as Police nad Metuji, where I got on a full train to Prague. We went via Nachod and I could hear people calling for each other. Somebody called out, 'Is there anyone going to Zilina?' It was a girl with whom I used to go to rhythmics class. She said that I had to get off, as I should go to the principal of the high school, Mr. Vavra, who was in Nachod. So I got off the train, spent the night at Mr. Vavra's place and then went on to Prague, arriving at Masaryk Station.

I arrived in Prague in May 1945 on the same day as Benes 18. I didn't know where to go. I remembered that some friends of my parents, the Jahns, lived on Vinohrady Avenue, so I headed off there. There was no transportation, so I walked. The shoes I was wearing had been soled from a transmission belt by one of the girls in Mezimesti. The Jahns lived on the fifth floor. The elevator wasn't working, so I walked up the steps and rung the bell, but nobody answered the door. A neighbor then told me that the Jahns weren't in Prague. Although I don't cry easily, I couldn't stop myself. I burst into tears, wondering about what to do next. Then I remembered I had a good friend in town, called Kveta Blazkova. We had both been interested in books and the theater and I had left a lot of things at her place - girl's treasures like diaries and such like, which seemed important when you were seventeen.

Kveta lived on Pod Kvetnice Street in Pankrac, Prague, so I went to see her. When I rung the bell, she came to open the door wearing a towel around her head, as she had been washing her hair. She welcomed me as if she had seen me yesterday. It was very nice to see her and she said of course, I could stay at her place. She asked me about what I had been through, like the others. I didn't like to speak about it, because nobody could understand what it was really like anyway. So I stayed with Kveta and thought about what to do next. I didn't know how to do anything, as I had only completed the fourth grade of high school. It occurred to me that I could get a job selling books at a bookstore, as I liked books. I then met my parents' friends and they had a long talk with me, saying that my dad wouldn't forgive me if I didn't continue with my studies. So, I soon did my school-leaving exams and then, still in 1945, applied to the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University in Prague to do a combined degree in English and Czech.

After the war I got back my parents' two-bedroom apartment in V Hornich Stromkach Street, Vinohrady. A couple with a child was living in a small, one-bedroom apartment in the house. I knew that none of my family would be coming back, so I suggested to the couple that we could swap apartments, and that's what we did. Later on, I received a visit from Tibor, the brother of my friend Duca from Zilina. Duca went through Auschwitz and was liberated in Bergen-Belsen. She remembered waking up in a white bed in hospital and she thought she must be in heaven. She told me that when she returned home, the first person she met was the collaborator who had been watching them when they were caught. So she reported him to the police who took him in but released him a week later. Tibor told me that Duca's nerves were in a bad state. So I invited her to Prague and we lived together in my small apartment until 1950, when I got married. Duca then moved back to Bratislava, but we still meet up to this day. She became a photographer. In the 1960s she was sent by an international agency to Israel to take photographs for a book. The preface was to have been written by Arnost Lustig [Czech prose-writer, born in Prague in 1926, survived the Holocaust, emigrated in 1968] but, when he emigrated, he hid the text of the preface along with the photos in a wall at his cottage. It was as if the photos had disappeared into thin air. They didn't turn up until after 1989. In the 1990s, the Jewish Museum in Bratislava hosted an exhibition of Duca's photos and the book was finally published under the title 'Walled-in Paintings'.

I can remember sitting at home during the February 1948 19 events. It was exam time and I was tucked into a blanket, listening to the radio. I was completely shuddering, although I wasn't cold. I had never trusted the Communists. I know that a lot of young people who had come back from concentration camps thought that Communism was a possible way forward. My friends in the ghetto were not Communists exactly, but they were certainly leftist in their thinking. Even back then I said that I couldn't be like a horse with its blinkers on and forced to look in one direction. That was also a reason why I wasn't overcome by enthusiasm in 1948. But I understand that my generation had experienced great disappointment and saw Communism as the only possibility of creating a better world. Nonetheless, on the insistence of my husband, I joined the Communist Party 20 some time after 1960. After 1968 [see Prague Spring] 21, however, we were both thrown out of the Party.

After completing my studies, I worked as a teacher all my life. I started teaching in 1950 at a secondary school in Kostelec nad Labem, an hour long bus journey away from where I lived. I then got married and became pregnant, which was why I requested to be transferred to a school in Prague. At the People's Committee [communist era local government authority] they told me, 'Comrade, if you taught math, it could be done straight away, but with your subject...' I told them that in my state I couldn't commute each day on an hour long bumpy bus ride, so I was given a place at an elementary school in Vrsovice, Prague. A few years later I moved to a nine-year elementary school and then, at the beginning of the 1960s, to a high school, where I finally got to teach my subject. A few years later I moved to a secondary industrial school. In 1970, I was transferred to a school in Jecna Street, Prague. Two years later, the school principal came up to me and told me he had no alternative but to dismiss me. That was because of my expulsion from the Communist Party. Under Act 255/1946 22, thanks to my testimonial, I was able to take early retirement, so I agreed to the dismissal and left the school.

I didn't experience any specific anti-Semitism against me after the war. This happened only once, in the middle of the 1950s, on the day when an article appeared in the papers about Jewish doctors who had allegedly attempted to kill Stalin and even to poison Gorky [see Doctor's Plot] 23. At the time, teachers who were to receive a salary increase, had to undergo an interview before a commission at the People's Committee, which was also attended by the Chairman of the Revolutionary Resistance Movement, the Chairman of the Communist Party, a school inspector, among others. Somehow I wasn't worried about this, because all my life I had read the papers and knew that I would be able to say what they wanted to hear. First of all, they discussed politics with me and then they asked me what I thought of the news about the Jewish doctors. I replied that I didn't understand it, as doctors were supposed to save lives, but I felt that they were trying to get me in a corner, so as to get back to my Jewishness. One of the people there was my later boss. I had never hid my origin and, besides, they obviously had my files in front of them. Even my pupils knew about my origin, because I talked about my own experiences when we discussed World War II.

After that, they discussed Slansky 24, pointing out that Jews were always well off materially. At this point I got angry. I said that I didn't know what Jews they had in mind, but that I had grown up in Eastern Slovakia where there was a lot of poverty. I also spoke about my Polish friends from the ghetto who had told me that Lodz was a very industrial city and that most of their fathers were tailors, as there was a large textile factory there, and that they remembered that as small children they stood on stools so as to help out with the ironing.

Shortly before that interview I had seen a theater performance of Tyl's 'Stubborn Woman', so I told them that I recall that Tyl knew that it wasn't possible to generalize. [Tyl, Josef Kajetan (1808-1856): Czech dramatist, actor, prose-writer and journalist, main representative of sentimental patriotic romanticism, organizer of national cultural life.] In that play there is a scene where a door-to-door salesman is sitting in a pub and along comes an alderman who tells him to leave. The salesman asks why he should leave when he had done nothing wrong. The alderman gives him a gruff reply, whereupon the salesman says, 'You have something against me, Ezechiel, or against Jews?' The alderman doesn't understand, so the salesman continues, 'Well, if you have something against me specifically, that's fair enough, but you can't despise Jews for what these salesmen are doing, as they aren't allowed to do anything else. They can't marry as they would like, or move, and they can't own land, so they have absolutely no alternative but to do what they are doing.' After I had said this to the commission, things quieted down and they didn't ask me anything else. As I mentioned above, I later taught at a school where one of the commission members was principal. I wasn't at all keen on going there, but there was nothing to be done. He always called me by my first name, but I was always on formal terms with him. In the end, I forgave him when we met at a gathering of teachers from that school, years later. He was old and deaf and sitting alone at a table, so I felt I had to sit next to him and I forgave him.

My husband was called Jaroslav Slesinger. He was born in 1903 in Chocen, and came from a Czech family. He qualified as an engineer and worked as a state official in Slovakia before the war and as an engineer for Pragovka [car factory] after the war. I met him through friends. We got married in 1950 and had a very nice marriage. He didn't come from a Jewish family, but he was one of the few genuine 'philosemites'. He never considered converting, but there wasn't a shred of anti-Semitism in him. I didn't long to be married to a Jew, in fact, I felt that I didn't want my children to have to go through what I had.

Our son Honza was born in 1951, our daughter Helena a year later. Both are living in Prague. Honza completed his secondary education and Helena has a university degree in economics. Helena works as an economist for a law firm and Honza is a computer programmer for a bank. I have two grandchildren. I taught English to both of my children and to my grandchildren. I didn't bring them up in the Jewish tradition, but they always knew that I was Jewish. Honza even joined the Jewish community, as I did in the 1980s. During the Communist regime I corresponded with Aunt Alzbeta in Israel and she was here once on a visit, so my children have known everything about it since they were children. Later on, they learnt about the Holocaust themselves. My granddaughter was with me in Israel and she liked it there very much. I can remember that my grandson, when he was little, once asked me what Jews were. I said to him, 'Well, have a look at me, do you think I'm different from anyone else?'

After 1968, my husband considered emigrating to Israel, but I talked him out of it. He was a great supporter of Israel, which was one of the reasons why he was thrown out of the Party. I was never a Zionist, nor were my parents, but I was interested in what was going on in Israel. However, the coverage in Czech newspapers of the conflicts over there were very biased. The Israelis were seen as the ones who had caused the war, as the aggressors. I went to Israel to visit Aunt Alzbeta about a year after my husband's death [in 1981]. I managed to get there in 1982 after complicated dealings involving my permit, which I was surprised to get. I spent a month there with my aunt. She was already 80 at the time, and we were both very happy to see each other. The second time I went to Israel was on a trip organized by the Jewish community of Prague. That was just after 1989, but my aunt was no longer alive then. Since then, I've been there another three times. My cousin Laci's son still lives there, and he now has a large family, with six sons. Apart from Hebrew, he can also speak Hungarian, Czech and Slovak. I can communicate with his children in English, but his wife speaks only Hebrew. Other than that, I go there to see the 'girls' from Mezimesti.

My husband and I were friends with Mr. and Mrs. Matejec, whose children were the same age as ours. Anca Matejcova was a doctor and her husband was a lawyer. They weren't Jews, but there wasn't a shred of anti-Semitism in Anca. We were also great friends with a teacher colleague of mine, Hanka. I was lucky with Hankas, for my next friend was Hanka Properova, who had been with me in Lodz, where she worked in the 'Gaskueche'. I didn't meet her there, but my mom told me about a young Polish girl in the 'Gaskueche' who had been very kind to her, always letting her come to the flame and not letting her wait pointlessly. At the beginning of the 1950s, I was walking with my pram when, all of a sudden, a woman asked me if I was Pollakova and if I had been in Lodz. That was the girl my mom had spoken about. She recognized me because I resemble my mom. We have been friends since then, and we have visited each other. I have even taught her children English.

One of my best friends was Hanka Vosatkova. She was Jewish but lived in a mixed marriage. Her husband was a doctor in Jindrichuv Hradec. They got divorced before the war, so she was deported to Terezin. My husband's family took her son into their care. In 1947, her son left for England, where she sent him to do a course in order to learn languages and find out about the world. But then came the February coup in 1948. In the 1960s, she managed to get over to see him. I can remember how afraid she was, for the last time they had seen each other he was a young boy and now he was married and had a child. She spent some time with him there and then she returned to Czechoslovakia. She went to England once more in 1968, where she then stayed. Unfortunately, she is no longer alive, but I have been over five times with her son at his invitation. He now lives in the state of Utah. I usually flew via New York, as I have some friends there, too.

When my children were young, we used to go to Chocen, which is where my husband came from. His dad and sister were still alive then. Later on, we used to go on vacations, usually to the Svaty Petr area in the Giant Mountains, where we stayed in a rented room. At the beginning of the 1960s, my husband had a heart attack, so we had to cancel our holidays in the mountains. We then bought a cottage by the Sazava River in Samopse, which is between Sazava and Ledecek. My husband was very fond of that place, for it was so beautiful. Nobody else lived around us and there was a weir below the cottage. However, I didn't like the fact that we were alone there and that there was no settlement nearby. Whenever I grumbled about it, though, my husband would ask me if I really wanted to have people looking in at us. After his death, however, I stopped going to the cottage. My son got divorced around that time and he, too, didn't go there, so I decided to sell the cottage, but he asked me to keep hold of it, as he was very fond of the place. He started going there again and has since spruced it up with his girlfriend. There is electricity and much greater comfort now. I don't go to the cottage very often, because it's not the same without my husband. But I enjoy the peace and quiet of the nature there and I always think how pleased my husband would be at the way Honza has improved it.

I didn't keep to Jewish traditions at home. We didn't have kosher meals, nor did we observe Sabbath. I went to the synagogue only on the New Year and Yom Kippur. I started to celebrate Christmas only after the war, when I got married. But Christmas has never meant very much to me. I wouldn't bother with it today, but ever since my husband's death I visit my children at Christmas.

I rejoiced at the revolution in 1989 [see Velvet Revolution] 25. I found out about what had happened on Narodni Avenue [brutal police intervention on student demonstration] from the radio. I listened to Radio Free Europe 26, as did a lot of people, but I preferred the BBC. In November 1989 we were in a state of pleasant shock and suspense, as we didn't know what would happen next. Life hasn't changed so much for me since the revolution. The main thing is that I am now free to travel. I get frustrated, albeit in a healthy way, at politics and the world. I often think of how, during the war, we imagined that the world would be a fairer place and how there would be no more wars - surely they couldn't be repeated after all we have gone through. We didn't know if we would survive, but we were sure that if we made it, we would certainly have things to look forward to, for everything would be beautiful in the world.

Glossary

Viera Šlesingerová

Praha
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídila: Pavla Neuner
Období vzniku rozhovoru: leden 2004

PLEASE NOTE - this is only the transcript of the interview, the final edited version will be uploaded later

Kazeta č.2, strana A

P: Kdy jste se narodila? A kde na Slovensku?

VŠ: 5.9.1924 v Košicích.

P: A žila jste v Košicích a pak v Praze rovnou?

VŠ: Ne, v Košicích jsem se narodila, protože můj tatínek byl „státní“ inženýr, byl přednostou berní správy a ti se věčně překládali, aby si neudělali přátele, takže já vám to všechno vyjmenuju. Košice, dneska je to Martin, to Svätý tam určitě není, možná že je to Turčianský, kdysi to byl Turčianský Martin. Trnava, to jsou dvě, který si vůbec nepamatuju, Bratislava, tu už si pamatuju, Žilina, tam se mi to moc líbilo, Prešov, až v devětatřicátým „jsme se přistěhovali“. Tady už jsme byli celou dobu.

P: Jaké máte vzdělání?

VŠ: Já mám Filozofickou fakultu tady v Praze.

P: Co jste dělala za obor?

VŠ: Angličtinu, češtinu.

P: Jaký jste měla zaměstnání, vaše nejdůležitější zaměstnání.

VŠ: Já jsem celou dobu byla učitelka, profesorka. Nejdřív jsem se dostala, to se dělala tehdy ta reforma, rušila se gymnázia, takže jsem byla na devítiletce, pak po mnoha letech jsem se vyšplhala, takže jsem byla... to je jedno, učitelka profesorka.

P: To jste učila angličtinu?

VŠ: Na tý základní jsem učila všehno. A později jsem se dostala na „gympl“, potom jsem byla na průmyslovce taky, tak angličtinu a češtinu. Tam jsem učila všechno, to byla hrůza. Nejhorší bylo, když oni mi ze začátku nějak cpali všechno, já jsem totiž nastupovala v Kostelci nad Labem a pak, když jsem se vdala a čekala jsem děcko, to jsem tam jezdila denně autobusem, tak jsem zažádala do Prahy. Tam se na mě podívali na národním výboru a řekli mi - no soudružko, kdybyste měla matematiku, hned, ale na tuhle aprobaci ne. Jedině na „Národní“. Já jsem řekla - třeba na mateřskou, já nemůžu denně cestovat. Takže jsem došla na Národní, z tý jsem se pak dostala na vyšší devítiletku a pak jsem se dostala do Prahy. No musela jsem do Prahy, jsem tady „měla děti. Sem jsem se vdala.

P: Jak moc pobožní byli vaši doma? V jak moc velký pobožnosti jste vyrůstala, pakliže nějaká byla?

VŠ: Maminka byla pobožná, každej pátek jsme zapalovali svíčky.

P: A měli jste doma košer kuchyni?

VŠ: Košer kuchyni jsme nedrželi a chodili jsme na velký svátky do synagogy, jinak si nevzpomínám.

P: A postili jste se na Jom Kipur třeba?

VŠ: Postili jsme se na Jom Kipur a na pesach jsem vždycky jela s maminkou do Košic k dědečkovi a babičce. Ale to je asi tak všechno. Jom Kipur první byla hrůza, protože to prý tady vůbec neznali, když jsem o tom vykládala. Tam se v předvečer Jom Kipur člověk musel modlit, já jsem chodila do židovský obecný školy, pokud jsem byla v Žilině. A to se prostě člověk modlil a takhle držel kohouta za nohy a ten samozřejmě.. prostě byla to jako taková oběť.

P: A co s tím kohoutem dělali?

VŠ: Ten se potom zařízl. Tedy maminka ho držela, mně stačilo, že jsem musela hebrejsky se modlit, já jsem to moc neuměla a ještě k tomu ten kohout do toho. Prý se tomu říká, někdo mi to řekl, protože tady to většinou lidi neznají, tehdy to bylo ze Slovenska, prý se tomu říká „kepura“.

P: To je hebrejsky nebo jidiš?

VŠ: Nevím. Předpokládám, že to bude jidiš.

P: A to prostě takhle ometal ten kohout okolo hlavy a pak se zabil?

VŠ: Asi ano, co potom s tím kohoutem.

P: Neklofnul vás?

VŠ: Neklofnul. Já jsem taky u toho hrozně vyváděla, je to moje hrozná vzpomínka, protože to byla hrozná věc pro mě. A postili jsme se, na pesach jsem jezdila k dědečkovi a babičce, u nich bylo košer, vlastně.. až řeknu historii manželství tatínka... Tatínek potom nějak dostal nějakej ledvinovej záchvat, když se oženil, a ten doktor říkal, že jestli maminka nechce ho zabít, tak žádný košer. Tak to byl důvod.. je zajímavý, i ti moji pobožní, tedy dědeček a babička, tohle akceptovali. Já si myslím, že tatínek byl velice rád. Ale u dědečka a babičky se drželo košer. Teď si marně vzpomínám, jak to bylo u tety, ke který jsem jezdila, u tý tety „Boži“. Tam taky ten její muž byl z velice pobožný rodiny, ale já mám dojem, že nedrželi košer, já si nevzpomínám.

P: Maminka byla Slovenka tedy, mluvilo se u vás doma slovensky?

VŠ: U nás se mluvilo doma česky, protože tatínek byl Čech. Ale maminka samozřejmě, když přišly ty sestry na návštěvu, tak ony mluvily mezi sebou maďarsky, čemuž můj tatínek absolutně nerozuměl.

P: A ona tedy byla Maďarka nebo Slovenka?

VŠ: Maminka byla maďarská Židovka.

P: A vy umíte něco maďarsky?

VŠ: Já umím maďarsky, můj tatínek ne, protože já jsem byla zvědavá. Protože když si ty moje tety vyprávěly maďarsky, tak já jsem to nevydržela. Já si pamatuju, že jsem si to třeba... vzala jsem tužku a třeba jsem takhle stála u okna, hůlkovým písmem jsem si to ještě nějak psala, takhle jsem to odposlouchala, já jsem se nikdy neučila. Tak gramatiku neumím.

P: Takže vy mluvíte maďarsky, anglicky, německy taky? A ještě něčím jiným?

VŠ: Německy taky. A ještě polsky.

P: Vy jste měla sourozence?

VŠ: Ne.

P: Teď se vás zeptám na manžela. To byl teda pan Šlesinger, a prvním jménem?

VŠ: Jaroslav.

P: A kdy se narodil? A žil v Praze.

VŠ: 28.2.1903 v Chocni, on taky žil na Slovensku. On byl taky na... napíšu to.

P: A nebyl Žid.

VŠ: Nebyl Žid. Byl Žid honoris causa.

P: Co to znamená?

VŠ: Jak se dává titul honoris causa, těm váženým osobám, tak já jsem to říkala takhle, protože on byl vyloženej filosemita. Opravdu jeden z mála, snad dva lidi, který jsem potkala a kde můžu říct, že v nich nebyl žádnej antisemitismus, a to byl můj muž a ještě jeden můj přítel.

P: A nepřemýšleli jste o tom, že by třeba konvertoval?

VŠ: Ne.

P: A on byl teda Čech rozenej, maminka jeho byla Češka? Česky mluvila?

VŠ: Ano. To byla česká rodina.

P: A jaký měl vzdělání?

VŠ: Inženýr byl, vysokoškolský technický.

P: A zaměstnání nějaký, takový to hlavní?

VŠ: On pracoval taky na berní správě, státní úředník napište.

P: On už zemřel. Můžu se zeptat, kdy?

VŠ: 1981. V Praze.

P: Měl nějaký sourozence?

VŠ: Měl sestru Marii, ta zemřela koncem 40. nebo začátkem 50. let.

P: Ale přežila válku?

VŠ: No, ona nebyla nikde, nebyla Židovka. A bratra, ten taky už zemřel, ten zemřel pozdějc, myslím, že v 70. letech. „nerozumím - něco české“.

P: A máte dceru, předpokládám. A jak se jmenuje?

VŠ: Dceru a syna. Syn se jmenuje Jan a dcera Helena. On ten můj Honza vstoupil do židovský obce. On není Žid a Helena taky, ale přece je tam její muž.

P: Vychovávala jste, nemyslím ani tak k pobožnosti, ale...

VŠ: Že jsem Židovka, to věděli vždycky.

P: A cítili se oni tak být? Vychovávala jste je tak, že i oni jsou Židi?

VŠ: Oni vědí, že jsou částečně Židi, to ano. Jednak Honza vstoupil do obce, tenkrát mu Alena Jelínková říkala - prosím tě, vždyť ten antisemitismus tady vzrůstá. Právě proto „trvá“. Ale „netuší nic“. A dcera... oni to všechno prožívají, čtou o tom koncentráku a věděli to, protože já jsem si celou dobu, i tedy za toho komunismu, já jsem si s tou tetou v Izraeli dopisovala. A ona tady jednou byla taky. Takže to věděli všichni.

P: Může se zeptat, kdy se narodili?

VŠ: Honza se narodil 1951 a Helena 1952 (nebo 1959, nerozumím přesně). Žijí v Praze.

P: Vystudovali vysokou školu?

VŠ: Honza ne a Helena vysokou ekonomickou.

P: Takže Honza má střední vzdělání. A co dělají za práci?

VŠ: Honza má střední vzdělání. Helena pracuje v advokátní kanceláři jako ekonomka a Honza pracuje v bance u počítače, on tam dělá nějakýho programátora.

P: A kolik máte vnoučat?

VŠ: Mám dvě vnoučata, od Heleny. Honza je ženatý, ale děti nemají. A Helena má dceru a syna. Zuzanu jsem vzala jednou do Izraele.

P: Zuzana je vnučka? Kolik jí je? A jak se jí tam líbilo?

VŠ: Ano. Zuzaně je 23. Líbilo, „nerozumím“.

P: A taky se cítí židovsky?

VŠ: Já nevím. Vím, že jsem ji brala na ty.. byly jsme spolu na Schindlerově seznamu a celkem.. protože ona hodně čte, takže dost přečetla z mý knihovny a tam je hodně těch knížek. Jinak byla letos na vánoce v Indii.

P: Teď se dostáváme k vašemu tatínkovi. Jak se jmenoval? Kdy a kde se narodil?

VŠ: Otto Pollak. Narodil se 14.9.1884 v Klatovech.

P: A žil teda potom na tom Slovensku s vámi všude.

VŠ: Ano.

P: A on zemřel v koncentračním táboře nebo před válkou ještě?

VŠ: Ne, tatínek zemřel v Lodži, tatínek spáchal sebevraždu v Lodži, bylo to 11.8.1944.

P: Jaké měl vzdělání?

VŠ: Byl právník. Nedělal advokáta, on byl na tý berní správě jako právník.

P: Takže vlastně jako státní úředník?

VŠ: Ano. On byl JUDr.

P: A jak moc byl pobožnej?

VŠ: Tatínek nebyl pobožnej. Jak říkám, dodržovalo se to, že o velkých svátcích chodil... já si pamatuju taky jako dítě, že když byl v „tý balanktóře“, tak to bylo považováno za čest, ale...

P: On sám nějak vnitřně pobožnej nebyl.

VŠ: On sám vnitřně, myslím, že „nebyl“ pobožnej. Ono se o tom nikdy nemluvilo. A ty věci že se nedržely u nás.

P: Nějaký.. kippu nenosil, nějaký viditelný znamení, zvláštní oblečení, to ne.

VŠ: Ne.

P: A jeho rodiče byli Češi? Rodnej jazyk pro něj byla čeština?

VŠ: Ano.

P: Já jsem viděla fotku, kde byl v armádě. A to se nechal naverbovat nebo musel narukovat?

VŠ: Za první světové. Musel narukovat do rakouské armády, nebyl legionář, mělo to nějakej zvláštní název, něco jako potom vstoupili do těch.. jak se jmenovaly ty oddíly, když „nezabíjet“...myslím to bylo jako domobrana nebo něco.. v Itálii. To nebyli legionáři, protože to bylo už ke konci války. Ale tohle, myslím, bude ještě z tý doby, kdy byl v tý armádě Rakousko-Uherský.  Já tady mám nějaký fotky, co tatínek dělal, jsem to dostala, to bude určitě on. To je v tý rakouský armádě.

P: Tam byla celou tu válku? On byl od začátku války, celou první světovou válku byl...

VŠ: Víte, jak to je? To se člověk na to ani nějak nevyptával, odkdy tam byl, nevím, zkusíme to nějak vydedukovat. Když byl narozen 1884.

P: To mu bylo 16, to byl dost starej, aby tam byl od začátku války.

VŠ: Já si myslím, že asi jo. Čili on vlastně byl po studiích, zřejmě.

P: A nemluvil o tom, neříkal nějaký - když jsme byli v armádě a tak.

VŠ: Moc ne. Vím, že... měl nějakou fotku, jak byl na koních, a já jsem říkala - je, tys jezdil. No to prý bylo to nejhorší ze všeho.

P: A on měl nějakou funkci? Důstojnickou nebo.. nevíte?

VŠ: Nevím. Asi měl, určitě měl něco, protože měl pucfleka.

P: Co to je?

VŠ: Nevíte ze Švejka, co je pucflek? To byl takový sluha, to byl tedy voják, který byl pucflek. Takže to musel, jako vysokoškolák, určitě. Musel mít nějakou funkci, vysokou určitě ne, ale nějakou zřejmě... nějaká šarže.

P: Měl sourozence, táta?

VŠ: Tatínek měl tři sourozence, myslím čtyři, ale ten jeden zemřel ještě jako děcko. Měl jednu sestru, teta Hermína, pak to byl strejda Pavel a strejda Jaroslav.

P: A ti všichni měli tak rodiny?

VŠ: Ne, ten Jaroslav se neoženil, ten byl nějak zraněn v první světový válce a dostával taky nějaký.. byl invalidní a neoženil se.

P: A tihle jeho sourozenci s rodinami přežili válku?

VŠ: Ten strejda Pavel ne, ti zahynuli celá rodina. Zřejmě v Osvětimi, já myslím, že „museli do jednoho“ z těch rodinných táborů, jak jsem na to koukala, přitom na tom úmrtí je ve stejný den, ne ve stejný den, ale ve stejný rok. A teta Hermína, ta si vzala Nežida, Řezníček se jmenoval, byl profesorem na gymnáziu. Měla dva syny, ona už nežije, z těch synů ještě žije jeden, oni utekli potom.. za války, nejdřív někde byli, jako pracovali, a pak dostali... oni nepracovali společně, oni byli, myslím, dva roky od sebe. A ten Mirek potom dostal nějaký avízo a utek přes hranice, dostal se do Švýcarska, tam ho nejdřív zavřeli, ale měl dost velkou kliku, že ho nevydali zpátky. A pak se dostal do Anglie, nějak k letectvu, ale nikdy ani nevzlétl, jenom nějaký ten výcvik prodělal. A ten žije „v Bolívii“ ještě dneska. Tedy v tom 1948 zase oba odešli s ruksakem přes kopečky a ten strejda byl velkým filatelistou, takže měl dost známých, takže jeli do Belgie k nějakýmu jeho příteli a podali si žádost na všechny možný vyslanectví a první jim odpověděla Bolívie, takže tam je. Já si pamatuju, že strejda byl klasickej filolog, latina, řečtina, znal fůru jazyků, oni to dělali tak, že o dovolený jeli vždycky do nějaký země, každej „z nich“ jel jinam a takhle se kluci naučili. A španělsky se naučili prej na lodi, jak jeli do tý Bolívie. Ale italsky uměli, německy, francouzsky.

P: A ten, jak byl svobodnej, ten to taky přežil?

VŠ: Ten nepřežil. Ten žil „nerozumím“ a nepřežil.

P: Teď dědeček, to znamená otec vašeho otce. Dědeček z tátovy strany. Věděla byste, kdy se narodil?

VŠ: Ignác Pollak. Ne, já myslím.. dědeček zemřel, než jsem se narodila, já jsem se narodila ve čtyřiadvacátým roce a bylo mu přes 70. Ale kdy, to nevím. Ale možná, že bych to tady někde mohla najít. Ale jeho žena byla Julie, rozená „Steinerová“. Babička. A ta zemřela mladá, tatínkovi mohlo být.. já nevím, kolem 16, 18 let. Jako mladá.

P: Kdy se narodila, to byste věděla?

VŠ: To bych taky se musela podívat.

P: A kde? Odkud pocházela?

VŠ: Já nevím, jestli Klatovy nebo tam nějaká vesnice nedaleko Klatov.

P: A ten děda?

VŠ: To je totéž. Ale já tam mám nějaký.. protože ozval se mi někdo z Ameriky, kdo pátrá po svých „rodičích“ a tam to je, tam bych to snad našla.

P: A babička s dědečkem žili kde?

VŠ: V Klatovech.

P: Děda měl nějaký vzdělání? Nevíte.

VŠ: Já jsem ho nikdy už nepoznala. On měl velkoobchod uhlím a lihovinami v Klatovech.

P: A byl úspěšnej?

VŠ: Snad jo. Měl tam dům, v tom domě to bylo, a byl velkej Čech, velkej českej vlastenec. Byl jedním z prvních, kteří..

P: Měl rád Masaryka?

VŠ: ...když „vstoupil“ do Sokola, měl.. to už nevím.. to se bralo v té době jako samozřejmý. Byl velkej Čech a vlastenec. Potom, až budu vyprávět, jak se naši brali, tam to zopakuju.

P: Jak moc byl pobožnej?

VŠ:  Já myslím tak asi zběžně pobožnej.

P: Takovej ten tradiční českej Žid?

VŠ: Ano.

P: A byl z český rodiny on sám, z česky mluvící?

VŠ: To já nevím. Mluvil česky. To taky když moje maminka přijela do těch Klatov, když se naši vzali a vystoupila z vlaku a začala mluvit, protože tatínek neuměl maďarsky, maminka neuměla česky, tak museli mluvit německy, tak jí řekl - Helenko, buď budeš mluvit česky, nebo mlč. Tak to jsou důkazy toho, že říkám pravdu, to se u nás tradovalo.

P: Byl děda v nějaký armádě? To asi nevíte.

VŠ: Nevím.

P: A měl sourozence on sám?

VŠ: Určitě měl, protože přece ta, jak jsem říkala ta Máňa že je... určitě měl sestru a myslím, že měl i bratra, ale to nevím.

P: Tak, ještě ta babička.

VŠ: O tý vůbec nic nevím. Protože ona byl už dlouho mrtvá, takže o ní nic nevím. Vím jenom, že nějaká ta... tam byl nějaký sňatek mezi bratrancem a sestřenicí. A teď si marně vzpomínám, kdo.

P: Tak teď se dostáváme na maminku. Maminka se jmenovala teda...

VŠ: „Paszternáková“ Helena.

P: Kdy a kde se narodila?

VŠ: Narodila se 21.8.1896, Buzita, to je nějaká malá obec u Košic. To jsem zjistila, až když jsem si po válce žádala o její rodný list.

P: Žila s vámi tam, kde vy jste mi říkala, o tom Slovensku, jak jste se stěhovali. A zemřela taky v koncentráku?

VŠ: Ano, v Osvětimi.

P: Měla nějaký vzdělání?

VŠ: Já mám dojem, že měla nějaký obchodní... nějaký takový středoškolský vzdělání.

P: A co dělala, byla žena v  domácnosti nebo dělala nějakou...

VŠ: Byla žena v domácnosti.

P: Jak byla pobožná, jste říkala, že byla. A ona pocházela tedy, její mateřština byla maďarština?
Měla sourozence?

VŠ: Devět. To bývalo, tehdy.

P: Ale aspoň bylo doma veselo.

VŠ: No veselo bylo, jsem vyslechla mnoho historek.

P: A řeknete mi něco o těch sourozencích, co si pamatujete?

VŠ: Já vám je vyjmenuju. Nejstarší byl Izidor. Ten odešel ještě před první světovou válkou do Ameriky a zemřel tam nějak koncem tý války, tuším, že tam zemřel. Nevím, kdy se narodil. Od tý tety Böži vím, ale jinak ne. Takže Izidor, pak byla „Szereny“, to jsou ty maďarský jména, já bych si to musela překládat a hledat ten překlad k tomu. Káman, Irma, „Szereny“, Ica, takhle se jí říkalo. Helena, Pišta, to byl kluk. Pišta, já mám nějakej slovensko maďarskej slovník, Pišta, Mancy, ta byla nejmladší. Böži byla mladší než maminka. Pišta je myslím Ištván a Ištván je Štěpán, musela bych si je přeložit.

P: Necháme to tak, jak si je pamatujete, jak jste jim říkala. A teď vaše babička z matčiný strany, ta se jmenovala jak?

VŠ: Berta rozená Schönová.

P: Kdy a kde se narodila byste věděla? A byla Češka?

VŠ: Ne. Ne, byla taky maďarská Židovka.

P: A žila kde? A myslíte, že se tam i narodila, nebo že se narodila někde v Maďarsku, nevíte?

VŠ: V Košicích. (druhá otázka bez odpovědi)

P: A zemřela před válkou nebo...

VŠ: Zemřela před válkou, oni zemřeli oba ve stejným roce, je to asi rok 1936, i s dědou. Asi tři měsíce po babičce zemřel děda.

P: Měla babička nějaký vzdělání? Nevíte. A byla ženou v domácnosti, předpokládám. Byli aspoň trochu zámožný, že měla nějaký pomocnice?

VŠ: Služebnou.

P: Ona byla pobožná hodně? Víc než máma.

VŠ: No samozřejmě, nosila „paruku“.

P: A to máma nenosila?

VŠ: Ne. U nich se vařilo košer samozřejmě. To je tak všechno.

P: A mluvila teda maďarštinou, to byla její rodná řeč.

VŠ: Pravděpodobně mluvili taky jidiš, to je možná.

P: A dědeček z máminy strany se jmenoval? Kde se narodil nevíte.

VŠ: Bernát Paszternák

P: Měl nějaký vzdělání?

VŠ: Měl zřejmě nějaký náboženský spíš. Jaký, to nevím, on dělal „šámese“, myslím. Oni byli hodně pobožní.

P: „Šámese“ dělal v těch Košicích?

VŠ: Ano. A co dělal jinak, to nevím.

P: A oni byli nemocní takhle před tou válkou?

VŠ: Babička zemřela na rakovinu a dědeček na... ale oni už nebyli na „nerozumím“.. dědeček měl mozkovou mrtvici a pak tam dostal, myslím, že to byl potom srdeční „záchvat“.

P: A pamatujete si na ně?

VŠ: Je si pamatuju, velmi dobře. Zvlášť na dědečka, toho jsem měla moc ráda, on byl takovej, jak ho vidíte tady na tý fotce, takovej vysokej, měl ty bílý fousy a vlasy a já jsem mu vždycky říkala, tenkrát jsem „mluvila“ maďarsky samozřejmě - „“aransöke nerozumím“, „aran“ je zlatý a „söke“ je plavý, tak zlatoplavý dědečku. Já jsem ho měla moc ráda. Já jsem tam takovej trochu exot. Protože z ne pobožný, ne maďarský rodiny, mluvila jsem česky, „s rodiči jsem teda mluvila“, já si dodnes pamatuju, když jsem tam říkala o pesachu „mámispomi“, což jsem teda musela, protože jsem byla nejmladší tam, a překládala, jak se to vždycky překládá a říká hebrejsky, já jsem to překládala do slovenštiny. Ti se mohli pak utlouct smíchy. Jim to připadalo tak jaksi nepochopitelný, že by se tohle mohlo taky do slovenštiny přeložit. A pamatuju si, že říkali, když dědeček měl ten záchvat, ten mozkový „snad“, no nevím, byl v nemocnici, buďto byl už ten ke konci, ale myslím, že to bylo „předtím“. Tak prostě tam vykřikoval, jak „horky přijedeme k Blaníkom“. Nebo - přijel. Takže zase nacionalista maďarskej. Oni byli hodně na Slovensku, ti Židi většinou byli Maďaři. Zvlášť to východní Slovensko, Židi z východního Slovenska.

P: Přemýšlel o tom, že by se přestěhovali?

VŠ: Tehdy? Oni už nebyli mladí. Nevím o tom, určitě ne, za mých dob už určitě ne. Neslyšela jsem o tom nikdy- Tak toho jsem měla moc ráda.

P: A tu babičku?

VŠ: Babička byla taková.. moje maminka vždycky říkala, že ta byla tak strašně hodná, že když už s nimi nebylo k vydržení a uhodila je, tak potřebovala na to dvě ruce. Protože neuměla pořádně.. ale babička byla taková... s babičkou já jsem tolik nekomunikovala. Ale s dědečkem ano a.. asi jako malý dítě se vždycky předvádí, tak jsem „dělala moc tam takovýhle věci“. A pak jsem řekla dědečkovi, aby to udělal taky, to si taky dneska pamatuju. A taky si pamatuju, jak na „pu rin“ jsme tam jednou byli taky a.. tedy byl tam ten domek, byl ten „nerozumím - všechny ty“, všechno to, co tam má být, „estrógen, nulach? no estrogen asi ne, ale já to tak rozumím“ a já nevím, co všechno, a já jsem tam... když je člověk jako děcko strašně pyšný na to, že umí pískat. A já jsem si tam začala pohvizdovat a můj dědeček se hrozně rozzlobil a řekl, že - tady v tomto domě se nesmí pískat, to je prostě hrozný. Dodnes si to pamatuju. Byl moc hodnej. Tedy jinak říkali, že jako otec byl přísnej, ale pro mě jako pro děvče byl strašně hodnej a hezkej člověk.

P: Jak se s babičkou poznali, to víte?

VŠ: „Nevím“. Myslím, že měli v tom taky určitou toleranci, protože oni věděli, že naši nejsou, že se u nás nevaří kosher. A když k nám přijeli na návštěvu do Žiliny, tak já si pamatuju, jednak že samozřejmě moji rodiče jim přenechali ložnici a že oni u nás jedli, ačkoli věděli, že tam nejsou kosher naši. Takže tu určitou toleranci měli. Což já taky oceňuju dneska zpětně.

P: A jak se seznámili vaši rodiče?

VŠ: Moji rodiče se seznámili v Košicích, já nevím jak. Maminka měla „nerozumím“, maminka byla moc hezká. Na fotkách nikdy ne, ale jinak byla opravdu moc hezká, moc milá a tak. A měla velkou lásku, „Majne Arpád“, to jméno znám, já jsem se s ním setkala. Byl z židovský rodiny, bohatý snad, já nevím, možná nebyl tak bohatý, ale prostě oni se moc milovali a rodiče jeho tomu nepřáli, že maminka byla chudá. Tak musel slíbit, jak se to dělávalo, na smrtelný posteli tatínkovi, že si ji nevezme. Čili se rozešli a já někdy si myslím, že to byl tak trošičku.. protože tam je byl velikej rozdíl věkovej taky i prostě ten background taky docela jinej. Ale tatínek byl zřejmě zamilovanej, musel být moc zamilovanej, protože dědeček taky se.. klatovskej dědeček, se taky stavěl proti tomu. Takže když se měli vzít, tak on napsal dědečkovi dopis, dědečkovi už tehdy bylo hodně, protože mu muselo být přes 80, když zemřel. Takže on už necestoval, tak tatínek napsal dědečkovi o svých úmyslech, že tedy s maminkou se chce vzít a poslal k tomu taky fotku. A dostal zpáteční odpověď, já vím z tý odpovědi jenom tohle - že jednak.. nejenom, že je Maďarka, ale je z tak pobožné rodiny a je tak ošklivá, že jestli si ji vezme, že ho vydědí. Proto říkám, že ta láska musela být veliká. A tatínka potom, nebo maminku, nevím, koho to napadlo, aby ještě ona napsala dopis dědečkovi.

kazeta 2, str. A

VŠ: Takže na to přišla pak odpověď, že posílá toho bratra na svatbu, toho tatínkova bratra, že on nemůže přijet. A všechno bylo v pořádku a pak byla hned pozvána do Klatov a o tom jsem už říkala, jak moc „měla“ mluvit.

P: A tam jenom přijeli na návštěvu?

VŠ: Ano. Já jsem taky byla v Klatovech, to už dědeček nežil, já už jsem dědečka nepoznala.

P: A maminčini rodiče tatínka brali?

VŠ: Ano, tatínek byl.. ještě větší exot než já. Brali ho, jistě, ale byly tam i určitý rozdíly.

P: Vy jste říkala, že jste se s tím Arpádem setkala?

VŠ: S tím Arpádem jsem se setkala, jednou, to jsme nějak byli v Mariánských Lázních, a on tam byl taky. Nevím, jestli už byl s tou svou ženou nebo ne. A moje maminka vždycky říkala, že moc byl nešťastnej, protože oni neměli děti. Takže když viděl mě, tak nějak si představoval, že mohl mít dceru a tak. Maminka vždycky říkala, že nejhezčí.. ona ho moc milovala, že nejhezčí na tom vztahu bylo to, že to nikdy „neskončí“. Když na to kouká zpětně. A je zajímavý, že si to jméno pamatuju. V životě jednou jsem ho potkala, ale maminka o něm mluvila.

P: Takže nevíte, kde se rodiče potkali.

VŠ: Museli se v Košicích potkat, ale kdy a jak, to nevím.

P: A svatbu měli, předpokládám, židovskou.

VŠ: Měli židovskou svatbu, někde mám svatební fotografie.

P: A ten dědeček s babičkou, jak umřeli před válkou, ti měli židovskej pohřeb taky?

VŠ: Samozřejmě. To se drželo. A klatovský dědeček je pochovaný taky na židovským hřbitově. To vždycky jsem říkala, že to byl první český náhrobní kámen s českým nápisem v Klatovech.

P: To byl ten vlastenec, že. A co tam měl napsaný?

VŠ: Ne, normální, to, co tam bývá německy a hebrejsky, bylo česky.

P: A jestli si to dobře pamatuju, tenhle děda měl ten velkoobchod s tím uhlím a lihovinami a bydleli  v Klatovech v nějakým domě?

VŠ: To byl jejich dům, on potom měl hospodyni nějakou, to vím. A když umřel, ten dům podědil ten syn Pavel, ten nejmladší syn. To je taky historka, můj dědeček měl smůlu na svoje děti, tatínek si vzal teda tu maďarskou chudou Židovku, teta si vzala křesťana a Pavel si vzal Betynku, o níž teda kolovalo, že ta rodina je taková.. že jsou to strašný skrblíci, zkrátka děda nechtěl, aby si ji vzal.

P: A ta byla Židovka?

VŠ: Židovka, Betynka „Vajzlová“. Takže nechtěl dát povolení k tomu sňatku, ale samozřejmě když umřel, tak první bylo.. proto taky víc dědil, než ti všichni ostatní, tak samozřejmě, „že si vzal tu Betynku“.

P: Vy jste tedy žili s rodiči v Košicích?

VŠ: Já si Košice z té doby vůbec nepamatuju, to jsem musela být ještě miminko nebo velice malý dítě. A taky v tom Martině jsem musela být moc malá. Já jsem do školy začla chodit v Bratislavě. Z Trnavy si pamatuju, vlastně.. já nevím, jestli si to pamatuju, u těch dětí člověk nikdy neví. Já jsem taková skeptická, že nevím, jestli si to opravdu pamatuju, anebo jestli se o tom mluvilo. Že můj tatínek měl vždycky všelijaké záliby. V té době to byl tanec, pak to byl bridž, pak to bylo rybaření. Ale takový.. na pstruhy, kde se chodí, ne kde se sedí. A v té době tedy to byl tanec. A já prý vždycky, když přišel z kanceláře domů, jsem mu připravila židli, aby to mohl doma zkoušet. Tak jestli si to pamatuju anebo jestli to znám z vyprávění, to nevím. To je všechno, co vím z Trnavy. A Bratislavu už si pamatuju, no Žilinu.. v Bratislavě už jsem chodila do školy.

P: V Bratislavě jste začala teda chodit na základku.

VŠ: V Bratislavě jsem začala chodit na obecnou školu, jak se tehdy říkalo, to byla takzvaná cvičná lidová škola. Cvičná proto, že to bylo přifařený nějak k pedagogický škole, nebo pedagogický fakultě.

P: To je to, jak se na vás učili ti učitelé budoucí.

VŠ: Ano. Měla jsem nějakého učitele Musila, který zavedl, tehdy se tomu říkalo globální metoda. To znamená, že jsme se nenaučili číst slabikováním, ale že jsme se učili číst hned slova. A můj tatínek z toho byl hrozně nešťastnej, protože prohlásil, že takhle se nikdy nenaučím číst. A nejhorší bylo psaní, že nejdřív se psaly jenom linky a dneska se to taky tak dělá.

P: Jak linky?

VŠ: Prostě čáry. Dneska se to taky tak dělá, ale dřív se to tak nedělalo a já dodneška si z toho pamatuju zase, že když jsem se učila -i-, tak tatínek to dělal se mnou. Nahoru, dolů, točit a už byl vždycky tak nešťastnej, že ke konci už mu ten hlas trochu přeskakoval. A to byl nějakej Musil, se jmenoval. Vydal taky nějaké knížky, já jsem je dokonce měla. V druhý třídě jsem měla nějakou učitelku „Chrenkovou“, ta se mi moc líbila. A do třetí třídy už jsem chodila v Žilině, to bylo do židovské lidové školy. A tam jsem měla.. dokonce tady mám fotografii. Z žilinské lidové školy, protože jeden z těch, kteří dneska žijí v Izraeli, ten za tím šel a rozmnožil tu fotografii, tam jsme.. já nevím, která to byla třída, tam jsem chodila třetí, čtvrtou, pátou.

P: Takže to byla základka.

VŠ: A potom se šlo na gymnázium.

P: A na to gymnázium jste taky chodila v tý Žilině?

VŠ: Do začátku tercie, to znamená do začátku třetí třídy gymnázia. A pak jsem chodila v Prešově do pololetí kvarty, já jsem dlouho nebyla v Prešově. A pak jsem přišla do Prahy a tu kvartu jsem dodělala a pak jsem prohlásila, že nebudu chodit do školy, že jsou tam antisemiti. Ještě rok jsem mohla chodit, ale já jsem si prosadila, že „nerozumím“ jsem byla, aby mě naši vzali. Ale kupodivu jsem nebyla tak úplně hloupá, protože tady byla jazyková škola, anglický ústav, pak to bylo přeměněný na Ústav moderních řečí, samozřejmě se to nemohlo jmenovat anglický. A tam byly židovské třídy, tam byly třídy pro Židy. Čili tam jsem žádnej antisemitismus nemohla cítit.

P: To bylo v jakých letech?

VŠ: To byl rok 1939-1940.

P: 1940-1941 už se pak vlastně nesmělo.

VŠ: To už se nesmělo. A tam jsem se naučila anglicky.

P: A vy jste měla z toho pražskýho nebo toho slovenskýho gymnázia nějaký špatný zkušenosti s antisemitismem?

VŠ: Já si myslím, že jsem jim křivdila. Protože to byla doba, kdy ty třídy byly přeplněné. Protože přišli lidi a děti ze Sudet a potom taky ze Slovenska. To znamená, že třídy byly přeplněné, bylo asi 40 žáků ve třídě. Ti kantoři toho museli mít až takhle. Já mám dojem, že jsem si to skutečně namluvila, teďka v duchu ty kantory odprošuju, protože vím například, stalo se, v devětatřicátým roce byly převezeny ostatky Karla Hynka Máchy do Prahy. A byly vystaveny tam do Národního muzea a školy samozřejmě tam chodily. A naše škola taky. Já jsem chodila do školy na „Lobkowiczově“ náměstí do gymnázia, a šli jsme tedy Slezskou ulicí a nějaký jeden chlapec.. jak on se jmenoval, od B... vystoupil ze školy. Jestli chtěli ti rodiče emigrovat, to nevím, to muselo být asi v květnu 1940. A takhle, jak jsme šli v tom štrúdlu, tak on jel na kole proti nám a kluci na něho všichni volali a on takhle zatočil a narazil hlavou na náklaďák a byl na místě mrtev.

P: A co na něj volali?

VŠ: No volali, aby... zdravili ho. Aby jel s nimi, aby šel k nim. Zvali ho tedy nebo jak bych to řekla. A vím, že na tom jeho pohřbu, on byl pohřben na židovským hřbitově, že promluvil ten třídní učitel. Takže takhle, nevím, já si skutečně myslím, že jsem si to namlouvala.

P: A z čeho máte pocit, proč jste si to namlouvala?

VŠ: Necítila jsem se tam dobře. Což je pochopitelné, byl to takový nápor, byla to obrovská změna. To napětí bylo, prožila jsem ten odchod, ten byl nucený, z toho Slovenska do Prahy. Tak tohle asi všechno se nějak podepsalo.

P: Takže něco úplně konkrétního...

VŠ: Neměla jsem tam přátele, tam byli jenom kluci, byly jsme jen dvě holky ve třídě. To znamená, že člověk nemohl... já jsem přišla v březnu, no do toho konce roku nebylo tak dlouho, takže žádné vztahy jsem si tam nevytvořila. Já si myslím, že to byl ten důvod. Ale já jsem tvrdila, možná, že jsem cítila skutečně, možná, že je to pravda, ale já si nevzpomínám. Člověk byl takový... raněný. Takže si třeba leccos vyložil právě jinak.

P: A vy jste museli teda odejít z toho Slovenska?

VŠ: My jsme museli odejít, protože tatínek byl státní zaměstnanec, ale byl Čech a všichni Češi, státní zaměstnanci, byli předáni pražský vládě. Do Čech. A můj tatínek měl tady nastoupit v Praze, ale jelikož byl už Hitler, tak ani nenastoupil, byl na takzvané dovolené „s čekatelnou“, to znamená on bral plat bez.. tam tehdy byly určitý přídavky pro ty, kteří bydleli v Praze, tak ten základní plat dostával, ale už nikdy nenastoupil. To bylo dost nepříjemné, oni prohlíželi, když se posílala nábytek, oni skutečně to prohlíželi, jako kdyby člověk chtěl pašovat já nevím co.

P: To prohlíželi na Slovensku?

VŠ: Slováci, ano. Gardisti slovenští, nebylo to příjemné.

P: A na tom Slovensku jste cítila nějakej antisemitismus? Ve škole třeba nebo... Setkala jste se s nějakým projevem?

VŠ: Tak vůči své osobě ne, ale já vždycky říkám.. já si pamatuju, jednou se mě zeptal někdo, seděla jsem na obci, byl tam někdo z Izraele a ten se zeptal, to ještě bylo za totáče, jestli tady je antisemitismus. A já jsem se ho na to zeptala, jestli zná zemi, kde není antisemitismus. On mi odpověděl - no snad v některých kibucech. Snad. Takhle bych na to asi odpověděla. Já jsem samozřejmě měla přátele jak židovský, tak nežidovský, moji rodiče se vždycky přátelili, a asi více, hlavně maminka, s těmi židovskými rodinami, ale taky. tatínek žil v téhle společnosti, takže taky s těmi nežidovskými.

P: Ale oni neměli moc času, ani vy ne? Jste se takhle pořád stěhovali.

VŠ: No nebylo to dobře, já jsem člověk, který se těžko přátelí. Mně to vždycky chvíli trvá. A vždycky pro mě ta doba byla dost těžká. Zvlášť, že na tu Žilinu už si tak docela nepamatuju. Pamatuju si takovou epizodu, taky než jsem si našla.. já nevím, kdy jsme se přesně stěhovali, pravděpodobně o prázdninách, tam jsem skončila druhou třída a třetí třídu už jsem nastupovala v Žilině. To muselo být odhadem.. mně mohlo být 8 let, takže 1924 rozená, tak 1932. Těžko jsem navazovala ta přátelství. Pamatuju si „dobře“, protože maminka byla vždycky hned s každým zadobře, jak jsme v parku seděly a tam byly dvě holčičky, pamatuju úplně, co měly na sobě, a - vidíš, tady máš dvě holčičky stejně starý, budete spolu chodit do školy. Takhle nás... těžký to bylo. Pamatuju si, že jsem, protože „sem měla moc dlouho přijít, ještě dneska žije v Bratislavě, Ducu“, když jsem psala, tak vždycky jsem si naříkala. Mezi Bratislavou a Žilinou byl rozdíl jenom v tom, že Bratislava přece jenom byla daleko rušnější město než Žilina. Ale rozdíl mezi Žilinou a Prešovem byl daleko větší, protože to už byl ten východ. Tam ve škole třeba ty holky mezi sebou mluvily šarišským nářečím. Kterým já jsem vůbec... idzem, tomu je rozumět, ale taky jsou slova.. a bylo to jiný, ty židovský děvčata zase byly z pobožných rodin, nosily punčochy, dlouhý, a to oblečení měly takový... a to město taky, tam byla jedna hlavní ulice a ty ostatní byly takový.. no byly ulice, ale to bylo docela jiný než ta hlavní. Čili ten dojem, ten život v tom Prešově byl jiný. A těžko jsem si na to zvykala. A sotva jsem si zvykla... tam jsem měla přítelkyni, to nebyla Židovka, nějaká Miluše „Preiningerová“. To byla Češka.

P: A co jste dělali třeba o víkendech, když jste měli volno? Táta nebyl v práci, jezdili jste někam na výlety nebo...

VŠ: Chodili jsme. My jsme neměli auto. Chodili jsme na výlety, zvlášť v Žilině, a když můj tatínek potom začal rybařit v Žilině, tak se chodilo ještě...

P: A jedli jste to, co ulovil?

VŠ: Ano. Pstruhy. Jednou jsme je vezli tetičce Böži do Bratislavy, protože ta bydlela v Bratislavě, a oni cestou  zasmrádli a takhle jsme je pouštěli do “nerozumím - záchoda?“. Takovýhle hlouposti člověk...

P: Vy jste říkala, že byl táta exot.

VŠ: Nene, pardon, aby bylo rozumět. V té maďarsko-židovské rodině byl jinej prostě, v tomhle smyslu, aby nedošlo k nedorozumění. Kromě toho tatínek byl málomluvný člověk, tak jako já. Můj muž o mně říkával, že Helena, moje dcera, za den namluví víc, než já za rok. A můj tatínek, ten ještě víc. A ty sestry mý maminky, ty jinak mluvily maďarsky a když tedy tam byl tatínek, tak se moc snažili mluvit jinak. A ta jedna teta prohlásila vždycky - prosím tě, máš tam někde kleště? - Na co? - Abych z něho vytáhla aspoň slovo.

P: Navštěvovali jste se s těmi tetami? Kde vlastně ti sourozenci mámy bydleli, taky po Slovensku tak různě?

VŠ: Po Slovensku, ta teta „Šári“ bydlela v Maďarsku. Jinak tedy na Slovensku, ta Mancy nejdřív v Košicích žila a potom bydlela na „Podkarpatský Rusi“.

P: A řeknete mi teď něco o těch sourozencích, co si o nich pamatujete? Jaký to byli lidi, třeba ten Izidor?

VŠ: Toho jsem neznala, ten odešel před první světovou válkou. Ani tu Irmu, ta odešla taky, ale o té vím víc, protože ta přišla jednou na návštěvu. Ale já si ji moc nevybavuju ve 20. letech. Ona měla syna jednoho, ten Izidor měl tři děti, ti dva chlapci zemřeli, ta dcera ještě žije, aspoň když jsem jela do Ameriky, tak jsme se tam setkaly a občas si zavoláme nebo napíšeme.

P: A měli židovský partnery?

VŠ: Měli židovský partnery. A je vdaná, ta „Rose“, který žije ještě tam...

P: A ta „Sereny“?

VŠ: Já jsem samozřejmě se víc.. bližší pro mě byli ti mladší sourozenci než ti starší. Ta „Sereny“ měla dva syny... Kálman...

P: Z těch sourozenců někdo přežil válku? Kromě toho Izidora?

VŠ: Tak Irma a Izidor přežili v Americe, ona odešla do Ameriky taky ještě, myslím, před první světovou válkou. A přežila teta Böži a přežil ten Mikloš, ten nejmladší, bratr maminčin.

P: Mikloše tu nemáme. Pišta, Mancy...

VŠ: Tak ne Pišta, Mikloš. Ten taky byl tady na fotografii.

P: Tak mi o něm něco řekněte. Toho si pamatujete?

VŠ: Na Mikloše si pamatuju, já si pamatuju na všechny. Ta „Sereny“ byla taková, taková prostě máma, dost prostá, s ní jsem se nikdy blíž... tak občas jsem tam samozřejmě šla na návštěvu, ale nikdy jsem se nesblížila. Ale ona měla určitě ještě jednoho syna, na to jméno si teď vůbec nevzpomenu. Takže s nima jsem se tak moc.. šla jsem tam povinně na návštěvu. Kálman se oženil, jeho žena byla Erži a jeho syn byl Pišta, ten taky přežil válku, vlastně můj bratranec. Kálman byl takovej lehkomyslnej člověk, občas míval nějaký finanční starosti kvůli tomu, co vím, a ta teta Erži byla velice.. taková povídavá žena a to manželství nebylo moc dobré.

P: A co dělal ten Kálman?

VŠ: Myslím, že někde v bance pracoval. A Pišta, ten samozřejmě studoval na slovenským gymnáziu, a teď, abych si to zase nepletla, a potom za války byl jako.. v pracovních táborech, co byly v Maďarsku, co kopali zákopy, většinou. Pišta krásně zpíval. Byl v tom pracovním táboře a potom je nějak vezli někam do nějakýho lágru. A cestou ve vlaku jim, co tam byli, některým, jeden z těch dozorců, co je vezl, řekl, že je tam zastřelej. A oni utekli, asi tři. A ten Pišta byl mezi nimi, dostal se až do Pešti a tam nějakým způsobem získal maďarský stejnokroj. Pak když přišli Rusové, tak ho chytili v tom maďarském stejnokroji, a chtěli ho zastřelit. On jim povídal, že je Žid, že si to vzal, jenom proto, že utekl. A ten důstojník, který ho vyslýchal, ten měl pucfleka, který byl Žid. A tak mu řekli - ať nám zazpívá nějakou hebrejskou modlitbu a ty řekneš, jestli je to správně. A on tedy jednak krásně zpíval, samozřejmě byl z té pobožné rodiny, takže zazpíval a přežil. Žil potom v Maďarsku, už Kálman si pomaďarštil jméno z Paszternak na „Perenik“, a zemřel tak asi v 70. letech. Měl jednoho syna.
Irma byla ta, co žila v Americe.

P: A Šári je další.

VŠ: Šári se vdala za sedláka, židovského, on měl nějaký hospodářství v Maďarsku nedaleko „Miškovce“, maďarsky je to „Miskolc“. Já jsem u nich byla jednou, co si pamatuju, měli dvě děti, zahynula celá rodina. A ta Šári byla velice veselá. Chcete o těch sourozencích, o těch historkách, tak většina z nich jsou od Šári. Protože ta.. jednak si dovedete představit tolik sester, tolik holek, ti chlapci byli v menšině. Takže ta vždycky měla jednak takový průpovídky, přišla jednou pozdě domů a dědeček se rozčiloval - jak to, kolik je hodin, a ona mu řekla, že je deset, a vtom tloukly hodiny jednu a dědeček - co mi to povídáš a ona říká - no jo, to tlouct nemůže. Nebo moje maminka... za války, jak to bývalo, chodili někteří ti zajatci taky do rodin židovských. Ne zajatci, vojáci. A tak taky.. ale možná že ne, možná to byl ten Arpád. Zkrátka někdo z těch maminčiných ctitelů jí nosil buráky, což byla tenkrát velká vzácnost a oni samozřejmě to věděli. A tak jednou.. myslím, že to byl ten Arpád.. vytáhl ten pytlík, vysypal a už tam byly jenom skořápky. Organizátorem toho všeho byla vždycky Šári. Jinak já jsem ji vídala velice málo, tehdy to byla velká vzdálenost. Oni bydleli u „Miskolce“, v Maďarsku, proto se směji, my jsme bydleli v Prešově nebo v Žilině, což nebylo tak daleko, ale co já se pamatuju, tak já jsem tam byla jednou. To byly ty děti malý, byly mladší než já.

P: A z její rodiny taky nikdo nepřežil.

VŠ: Taky nepřežil.

P: A Ica?

VŠ: Ti neměli děti, byla provdaná, Kleinová se myslím jmenovala. Měli nějakou výrobu takových pudrů a kosmetických věcí. Žila v Košicích. Já jsem vlastně vždycky byla u dědečka a babičky. Ale na návštěvě jsem tam u nich byla taky.

P: A ta „Böži?

VŠ: Teta Böži byla moje nejmilejší tetička. Jednak než se vdala, tak my jsme měli velký byt v Bratislavě a ona přišla do Bratislavy, ona měla hospodářskou školu nebo ekonomickou nějakou, já nevím, byla zaměstnaná a bydlela u nás. A potom, když se vdala, tak její muž byl... jak se tomu dneska říká.. tenkrát se tomu říkalo cesťák. Dneska se tomu říká nějak jinak, zní to daleko vznešeněji. Obchodní cestující, to zní úplně jinak, žádný cesťák. Takže často nebyl doma, tak taky u nás bydlela, neměli děti. Takže já jsem pro ni byla její dítě. A já jsem ji velice milovala. Taky jsem někdy jezdila s ní do Košic. A po válce.. jednak ona ještě za války.. ne, když už jsme byli tady v Praze, třeba po nějakých „železničárech“ nám poslala nám balíček, tam bylo lepší zásobování než tady, já nevím co, to už si nepamatuju. A pamatuju si taky, že ještě jednou nás přijela navštívit, už v roce 1939. Mně byla velice blízká. Ona byla moc vtipná a tehdy se na mě.. jednak jsem daleko víc znala rodinu mé maminky, proto mi asi byla daleko bližší. A tehdy tam byla teta Hermína a přijela teta Böži. A já, když přijela teta Böži, tak já jsem se na ni vrhla.. tatínek jí jel zřejmě naproti a přivezl ji.. já jsem se na ni vrhla, tak jako vždycky, a potom moje maminka strašně mi vyhubovala, jak jsem to mohla udělat, že takhle jsem se nikdy nevítala s tetou Hermínou. Ale já jsem jenom projevila svůj cit. A oni potom za války byli nejdřív v Novákách v tom táboře a potom bunkrovali, jak se tehdy říkalo, schovávali se za Slovenského národního povstání na horách. A přežili to, kupodivu. Oba dva. Protože teta vždycky byla nemocná, skutečně, ona měla něco se žaludkem..a já nevím, s různými jinými orgány. Ještě bych k tomu jenom řekla, že ona velice měla ráda děti. A otěhotněla v roce 1939, pak to dala pryč.

P: Protože musela kvůli válce?

VŠ: No nechtěla v tý době to dítě mít.

P: A jak se tenkrát takový věci dělaly?

VŠ: Já jsem byla ještě děcko. No už jsem nebyla takový děcko, ale o tom se nemluvilo, já jsem to věděla jen.. nebo možná, že jsem se to dověděla až po válce. No našel se přes známýho nějakej lékař, kterej to...jinak to nemohlo být, protože bezpochyby nešla k nějaké andělíčkářce. Po válce už děti neměla. Takže po válce zase já jsem pořád byla ta její... No a oni se zachránili, já si pamatuju, když jedni společní známí, kteří žili tady, ta paní byla Židovka, ten pán ne a přežili tady válku, „Jánovi“ nějací. A když mně přišli říct, že dostali dopis od tety, já jsem byla úplně přešťastná. Ona tehdy teta přijela taky do Prahy a já jsem po válce velmi ztloustla a ona mi vždycky říkala -„maďarsky nerozumím, něco jako ghuj oza“, zakutálej se ke mně. Já jsem to velice brzo zase sundala, to byla bezprostředně po válce taková.. A pak se rozhodli, že pojedou do Izraele a jeli do Izraele. Ze začátku se těžce protloukali, strejda dostal nějaký zaměstnání, jakýsi státní úředník někde, ale teta chodila na posluhy a tak. Ona jinak celej život pracovala a tehdy jinou práci ze začátku nedostala, než to uklízení. A ona, která byla ta nemocná, ten strejda byl vždycky zdravej, tak teta to všechno přežila a strejda dostal infarkt a během nějaký hodiny byl pryč. Ona přijela k nám, někdy to muselo být v těch 60. letech, když to bylo trošičku možný. Já jsem měla velikou radost a můj muž ji vždycky přemlouval, aby tady zůstala. Ale ona říkala, že nemůže, že tam je ten hrob. Ona tam byla sama. A já jsem tam potom jela asi v dvaaosmdesátém roce, to byla taková.. ona mi vždycky psala, abych přijela, zvlášť, když můj muž zemřel. Já jsem vždycky říkala, že to je těžký, že to nejde. A pak mi napsala dopis, kde mi napsala, že má všecko vyřízený, na konzulátu, všechno možný, abych přijela. Všechno to potvrzení, že se o mě bude starat a že všechno zaplatí. A já jsem říkala - no to nemá smysl, mě nepustí, přece například k příbuzným nepustí. A můj syn mi říkal - no prosím tě, aspoň to zkus. Já jsem říkala - to nemá smysl, já tam vystojím celý dopoledne a pak mi řeknou, že ne, já tam ani nejdu. Ale on tuto větu opakoval v pravidelných intervalech, takže já jsem nakonec ho poslechla a šla jsem tam. Vystála jsem si tu frontu a přišla jsem tam a byl tam nějaký úředník, který kupodivu byl docela slušnej, tomu jsem to řekla.  A on mi řekl - to nejde, pouštějí se jenom nejbližší příbuzní a ještě musí být nějaký úmrtí v rodině a tak, proč jako se nesejdete třeba v Rumunsku, dokonce mi říkal. A já jsem řekla - teta je stará, ona nemůže už cestovat, tohle je jediná možnost. Taky má nastoupit do domova důchodců, teď bych tam ještě u ní mohla být. Takže jsme spolu takhle chvíli mluvili a on teda řekne - nejde. Aleako občan tohoto státu, to si pamatuju dodnes, máte právo podat si žádost. A dal mi formulář. A já jsem si říkala, když tedy je tady ta možnost, aspoň tu žádost si podám. Teta chudák, nemocná, stará, za tím běhala, tak já udělám aspoň to, že ten formulář vyplním a přinesu. Když jsem to tam přinesla, tak tam byl samozřejmě jiný úředník, který, když jsem mu to podávala, okamžitě řekl, že ne. A já jsem na to řekla - no ale váš kolega mi řekl, že jako občanka tohoto státu mám právo si podat žádost. Tak na to neřekl ani popel, tu žádost si vzal a já jsem to dostala. Já jsem do Izraele přijela, každej na mě koukal, že to snad není možný, takhle to bylo. To byl asi dvaaosmdesátej, protože 1981 zemřel můj muž, tak to bylo asi 1982. Takže jsem byla měsíc u tety, to jí bylo 80 tehdy. A byly jsme obě přešťastný. A potom jsem, jak obec pořádala ten let do Izraele, tak já jsem byla taková šťastná, protože my jsme si dopisovaly, a řekla jsem si - no tak to zavolám tetě až těsně před. A pak mi volala ta sestřenice z Ameriky, že teta umřela. Takže to už jsem ji neviděla. Ale setkala jsem se ještě s bratrancem, se synem tety Šári,  to je „Lacy“. Ten zemřel až později a měl jednoho syna, který žije v Izraeli a má asi 6 dětí. A když jsem byla v Izraeli, vždycky jsem se s nimi setkala, jednou jsem tam vzala Zuzanu taky, tak ta se zvlášť spřátelila s těmi děvčaty a s ním si občas zavoláme. Jeho žena bohužel neumí jinak než „hebrejsky“. Takže s ní těžko mluvím, ale s ním můžu maďarsky a těmi dětmi anglicky.

P: Ještě tu máme Miklóše a Mancy.

VŠ: Miklóš by nejmladší bratr maminčin, ten už byl na vojně v československý armádě. Byl zaměstnaný v nějaký pojišťovně, tuším, oženil se a měl syna, „Tomy“ se jmenoval, a ta jeho žena a ten syn zahynuli. A on byl komunistou a jako komunista byl v maďarským vězení, když po tý.. když obsadilo Maďarsko Košice, tak tehdy. A to mi vyprávěla teta Böži, že říkali, že vypadal tak strašně, že ho vlastní rodina nepoznala. No ale přežil to, to musel být rok 1939-1940. Pak byl.. jako „nerozumím - mulka soldalatoš“ taky byl, v koncentráku nebyl, ten „Lacy“ byl, „Lacy“ byl v Osvětimi, ale Pišta myslím nebyl, vrátil se, pracoval potom...oženil se podruhý...

P: A zůstal komunista?

VŠ: On zemřel velice brzy. Pracoval v Pravdě, tam v těch novinách na Slovensku, a dostal srdeční záchvat. Byl velice mladej, myslím, že mu nebylo ještě „padesát“.

P: A Mancy?

VŠ: Mancy byla svobodná, Mancy byla moc veselá, velice vybíravá, nikdo se jí dost nelíbil, „proto se nevdala“, sestry jí kvůli tomu spílaly. A zemřela za války. Někdo ji viděl, někdo mi říkal, že ji viděl v Osvětimi a že byla strašně zbědovaná.

P: Ještě se zeptám, jak jste na tom byli třeba finančně, s rodiči?

VŠ: Slušně jsme na tom byli.

P: A vy jste měli nějaký státní byty nebo jak jste bydleli? Když jste se stěhovali, to jste měli všechno od státu, podle toho...

VŠ: Ano, nevím, jestli se tam činže platila nebo ne, pravděpodobně se platila. Ale byly to vždycky byty vyhrazený pro ty přednosty těch berních správ.

P: A to byly nějaký lepší byty v tom případě, ne?

VŠ: To byly lepší byty.

P: I v tom Prešově?

VŠ: V Prešově taky, to byl takovej starej palác. To byly obrovský.. ta jedna byla taková obrovská místnost, tam jsme měli jídelnu, ale velmi málo jsme ji využívali, protože to šlo špatně vytopit, tam se topilo dřevem. Tam byly kamna na dřevo, protože tam na Slovensku bylo hodně dřeva, takže tam se topilo dřevem. A to bylo takový krásný, to bylo takový čistý teplo. To hezky vonělo. Služebnou jsme měli vždycky a tam v Prešově ještě pomáhal občas nějakej pan „Borodáč“, který byl takovým sluhou v tom úřadě, a když se potřebovalo přinést to dřevo nebo tak, tak to dělal taky.

P: Co maminka dělala takhle celý dny, když táta byl v práci?

VŠ: No tak maminka se starala o domácnost, vařilo se, tatínek chodil na oběd domů. Takže chodila nakoupit, vařila se služkou, potom pletla, háčkovala, dečky dělala.

P: Měla nějaký koníček, pamatujete se na nějaký hobby? Co měla, když táta chodil rybařit třeba.

VŠ: Měla ráda společnost, navštěvovala se s přítelkyněmi.

P: A táta chodil mezi ostatní někam, třeba s kamarády do kavárny nebo něco takovýho?

VŠ: To chodili obyčejně společně s maminkou.

P: A vy jste doma slavili jenom židovský svátky nebo jste třeba slavili vánoce?

VŠ: Vánoce se u nás neslavily. K „chanuka“ jsem dostala knihu, vánoce se neslavily, ale vždycky jsme se chodili na stromeček koukat. Ale mně to nikdy ani nepřišlo, líbil se mi ten stromeček, ale nikdy mi to nebylo líto. Teď řeknu historku, kterou znám z vyprávění. Já jsem byla hodné dítě, až na to, že jsem špatně jedla. Velice špatně. A když se mi něco nezamlouvalo, měla jsem strach nebo naši chtěli jít večer pryč, tak já jsem dokázala, když jsem chtěla, zvracet. Čili se mnou měli své trápení. A mně bylo pět let, tak mě dali do „nerozumím - bídnu“. To byl takový „nerozumím - gerhajbl“, to bylo někde na kopci, kde byly dětičky, na tři měsíce. Vím, že tam byl kopec, že jsme tam jezdili na sáňkách. Vím, že tam byla jedna holka, že zřejmě tam byly všechny, který měly nějakej takovej „nerozumím - chap“, která takhle „cop“, když měla vztek, tak dělala tohle. A já jsem se jí jednou smála a ona mi řekla - „německy“, ale já nebliju každou noc jako ty. Takže to je jedna vzpomínka a druhá, ale tu znám pravděpodobně z vyprávění od rodičů, protože oni se to dověděli od toho lékaře. Byly vánoce, stromeček, pod stromečkem dětičky dostaly.. rodiče poslali dárečky. No kdo tam neměl dárek, samozřejmě jsem byla já. Načež jsem hrdě prohlásila - já tady nemám dárek ne proto, že by mě naši neměli rádi, ale proto, že my jsme Židi. Načež pan doktor, tam měl někde nějaký autíčko, tak mi ho přinesl, protože mu to bylo líto, tak mi to autíčko dal. Zřejmě to znali naši od toho doktora. Tak tohle je historka z „nerozumím“ vánoce. Já jsem vánoce začala držet až potom po válce, když jsem se vdala. Ale pro mě vánoce nikdy moc neznamenaly. Je to jenom kvůli dětem a já bych si mohla klidně, po smrti manžela už bych je mohla klidně „vynechat“, ale nemůžu to udělat kvůli dětem. Protože já chodím k nim.

P: A velikonoce, to už vůbec ne. To jste nedrželi, předpokládám.

VŠ: Velikonoce doma? Já jsem chodila vždycky k dědečkovi a babičce. My jsme k nim chodili na pesach. Jak si vzpomínám na ten purim, tak na purim jsem tam taky byla.

P: Pamatujete si na nějaký jídlo, co jste měli?

VŠ: Já si pamatuju, myslím, že se to jmenovalo „nerozumím - krajzevy“. Smažilo se to a dělalo se to na pesach. Nebylo to maso, já nevím, co to přesně bylo, od tý doby jsem to nejedla. Jinak se jedly ty obvyklé věci. A já jsem nikdy nebyla žádný gurmán, takže mně to bylo celkem jedno.

P: A večeřeli jste taky společně.

VŠ: Večeřeli jsme společně. Já jsem byla vymodlený dítě, protože já jsem se narodila 4 roky po svatbě. Takže naši byli moc rádi, že mě mají. Měli strach. Maminka tehdy byla ve Františkových Lázních, jak se to dělá, ženy, který nemohly mít děti, tam jezdívaly. A pak jsem přišla na svět já.

P: Pamatujete si na nějaký knihy, který jste měli doma? Byly to maďarský knížky?

VŠ: Maďarský knížky jsme neměli, no maminka si tu a tam nějakou půjčila nebo četla německý knížky, ale česky moc nečetla. Četla.. když četla Čapka, měla moc ráda „Goleta v údolí“, to si pamatuju. Ale většinou to byly knížky, který četla v němčině. „Verfela“ nebo Manna, „Zweiga“ a tak. Tatínek moc nečetl, tatínek četl daleko míň a měli jsme ten „nerozumím - flanzen“ pokoj, tam byla taková knihovna a tam byly „nerozumím“ spisy a já nevím jaký sebraný spisy, který lidé z těch lepších rodin „měli mít“.

P: A ten nábytek, když jste se stěhovali, tak jste si vozili s sebou? A tohle něco z toho není?

VŠ: Ano. Ne, není, nic tu není. Tenhle koberec, ten je z domova.

P: Byli nějak rodiče, nebo spíš táta, politicky angažovaní?

VŠ: Ne.

P: Nestarali se o politiku.

VŠ: Tatínek jako státní úředník nemohl být, i když zase si vzpomínám, že když můj tatínek byl.. já jsem někdy říkávala, jak píše Romain Rolland tý Petrově Alici, že jeho otec, Petr to tam říká, byl.. už musel být státním úředníkem, když byl ještě v bříšku své maminky, tak něco podobného byl můj tatínek, taky velice korektní, přísný pán. A my jsme bydleli v Žilině, ten byt byl přímo v tom domě, kde byly úřady. Takže já jsem občas chodívala, tatínek tam měl takovej dlouhej stůl, a tam jsem ráda hrála pingpong. A někdy jsem tam teda za tatínkem šla a jednou jsem tam takhle vběhla a byl tam nějakej pán a nějak hrozně tatínka přemlouval, dál už nevím, zase  to si nevzpomínám, ale vím, že se říkalo, že.. to jsem slyšela, jak si to povídali naši, že ho přemlouval, aby vstoupil do Agrární strany. A tatínek samozřejmě se bránil, tehdy to byla nejsilnější partaj, a on mu na říkal, že ruka ruku myje. Takže nevstoupil nikdy do žádný strany. A byl takovej opravdu neúplatnej. To taky se vypráví o tom mým strýčkovi, to nebyl Žid, ten Řezníček, profesor, jak jednou nějaká paní přinesla tetě husu, kluk se nějak špatně učil. Musela tu husu vzít a pak ji zase hezky vrátit. A tatínek taky byl takovej...

P: A byl přísnej i na vás doma?

VŠ: Byl přísný i na mě, on byl vůbec přísnej takovej, ale jak mi dneska.. já jsem se na tatínkově smrti přesvědčila o tom, jak málo o tom druhém znám. Právě proto, že on byl málomluvný; já vím, že mě měl velice rád, že jsem byla jeho všechno, že by někdy až snesl modré z nebe, ale nikdy to neuměl tak ukázat jako maminka. A nakonec to, že spáchal sebevraždu, udělal proto, aby nás zachránil. On si myslel.. to bylo v Lodži ve čtyřiačtyřicátém, když se likvidovalo ghetto, a tehdy brali lidi už a lidi se schovávali a tatínek nemohl na nohy. Tehdy se tomu říkalo Muskel „švunk“, to byl ten název pro to, prostě ty svaly už byly oslabený a neposlouchaly. Takže tatínek mohl chodit, velice špatně chodil, a to byla doba, kdy brali hlavně ty mladší, do práce. Takže tatínek byl doma a my jsme se schovávaly. Ne, tehdy jsme se ještě neschovávaly, my jsme se schovávaly až potom. My jsme byly s maminkou b práci a tatínek byl doma a teď si pamatuju, jak jsem seděla, já jsem pracovala v „nerozumím - Niederunzatleresort“, což je sedlářství, na koze, to je taková koza, na který se sedí. Já jsem se tam přátelila velice s těmi některými polskými mladými lidmi, to byli Židi samozřejmě, a takhle jsme tam ještě chvilku zůstali a povídali a najednou přišla maminka a říkala, to slyším dodnes, maminka mně říkala - „Beruli“, něco strašného se stalo. Tatínek spáchal sebevraždu. Tatínek si podřezal žíly a nechal tam dopis, ten bohužel nemám, ve kterém píše, že to udělal proto.. prostě byl tak při sobě, že dal pryč deku, aby ji nezašpinil. Dal si tam lavor, aby opravdu nic, píše, abychom se na něj nevázaly, i kdybychom musely „nerozumím“. Takže nemohl víc udělat, nebo nemohl jinak dokázat tu lásku, kterou člověk předtím tak u něho neviděl. To byla jiná povaha. Já trošičku mám taky jeho povahu, ale už.. protože to vím... ale taky nedovedu tak jako ťuťuťu ňuňuňu, to nikdy nebylo moje.

P: Chodila jste na nějaký soukromý hodiny něčeho?

VŠ: Na klavír jsem nechodila, to jsem odmítla, protože jsem měla moc dobrou přítelkyni, tu Ducu, která žije v Bratislavě, to byli dva sourozenci, maminka hrála krásně na klavír a oni museli taky. A tam vždycky se hádali kvůli klavíru, nikdo z nich nechtěl cvičit. Tak já jsem prohlásila - já na klavír hrát nebudu. Pak jsem toho litovala. Jedině chodila jsem na francouzštinu.

P: A umíte francouzsky? Zapomněla jste.

VŠ: A samozřejmě do rytmiky jsem chodila, to se chodilo „to bylo povinný“. Takový cvičení na hudbu.

P: A makaby nebo něco takovýho?

VŠ: Já jsem neměla ráda tyhle.. takový ty společný sporty. Ani do Sokola jsem nechodila. Já jsem vůbec tělocvičny neměla ráda, mně to tam hrozně smrdělo. Takový docela prozaický důvod.

P: A s kamarády jste dělali třeba co? Jak jste trávila s kámoškama volnej čas?

VŠ: Co se tak dělalo. Navštěvovaly jsme se, já jsem sbírala fotografie „nerozumím“, na to jsem měla takový album a sbírala jsem ty programy, tehdy se vydávaly takový, byly 24, to byly dva listy a tam byl stručný obsah. A to sbírala pro mě i ta teta Böži, já jsem jí to taky posílala. Tak to bylo to jediný, co jsem v životě sbírala. Když jsem byla v Žilině, tak „jsem se přátelila s tou Ducou“, ti měli dům se zahradou, tak jsme tam chodily na zahradě. Samozřejmě bruslilo se, plavalo se, v zimě bruslení, v létě plavání, lyžovat jsem začala velice pozdě, když jsem byla s tatínkem v Tatrách, tak to jsem měla s sebou lyže. Měla jsem ty lyže vůbec s sebou? Já myslím, že ani ne, že jsme se jenom procházeli. Takže vlastně jsem se naučila lyžovat až po válce, já jsem se nikdy nenaučila pořádně. Pro mě sjet kopec byl vždycky problém, protože jsem měla strach, že do něčeho narazím.

P: A jezdili jste někam na dovolenou, byli jste na nějaký dovolený? Jezdili jste pravidelně, třeba jednou za rok, na nějakou delší dovolenou?

VŠ: Na dovolenou jsme jezdili, protože tatínek měl 4 neděle volna. Tak ze začátku se jezdívalo jednak do těch lázní, to byla doba „nerozumím“ lázní, obyčejně do Mariánek, potom taky někdy s maminkou, a já jsem byla někde. Buď jsem byla v Košicích u dědečka a babičky, nebo pamatuju si, jednou jsem byla u tety Hermíny v Klatovech. Většinou jsem jezdívala s maminkou, to jsme byly v těch různých koutech slovenských, Piešťany, Trenčianské Teplice, „Korytnica“ nebo do Tater, Poprad jsme znaly.

P: A třeba když jste měli prázdniny letní na škole?

VŠ: Dlouho jsme se chystali, že pojedeme na „nerozumím“ do Jugoslávie, anebo... taky to bylo nějaký jezero v Rakousku. Pak přišla válka, to bylo v roce 1939, 1938 nejdřív, to už se nedalo.

P: Měli jste doma nějaký zvířátko?

VŠ: My jsme pejsky, vždycky jednoho, měli foxteriérky dva, mladé, jeden, ten dostal psinku, umřel, a pak jsme měli druhýho, ten taky za nějaký čas umřel. Měla jsem kanárka dlouho. A v roce 1938 jsem dostala štěňátko maltézského pinče. No a pak, když ... my jsme ho dali „nerozumím“. Honza byl taky takovej milovník. A já jsem teď málem měla kočičku. Dostal ji ten „nerozumím“ chlapec, jeho babička má nějakej.. v domku žije má tam kočky a přišla, jestli bych nechtěla kočičku. Já jsem vždycky říkala - já nemůžu mít kočičku, já nemůžu se uvázat, nebudu stále doma. Tohle jsem sice řekla, ale potom, když přišla druhej den na návštěvu, tak mi říkala - ty ji chceš? Ne, já ji nemůžu. Načež jsem si ji přinesla. „Potom si ji vzala Zuzka“, já jsem ji měla ještě týden.

Viera Šlesingerová, 5.2.2004
kazeta 1, str. A

P: V tom vyprávění pro muzeum taky vyprávíte o tom, jak jste se potom z táboru vrátili domů?

VŠ: Myslím, že ano. Já vám to můžu zopakovat. Tak ten konec války jsem zažila v Meziměstí u Broumova, tam jsme byli v té továrně, kde se dělaly takový malý součástky a já jsem tam šla s některými z těch, se kterými jsem pracovala v Lodži. Náhodou jsme se tam zase setkali.

P: Tak pojďme na to, jak jste se vrátila zpátky, ta situace, kdy jste musela nějak pokračovat, žít nějak.

VŠ: Když jsem se vrátila, tak já jsem přijela do Prahy, přesný datum nevím, v květnu, právě ten den, kdy přijel Beneš. Takže já jsem se těžko dostávala, protože nic nejezdilo a teď jsem si říkala - tak teď jsem doma, kam půjdu? Pak jsem si vzpomněla, že známí našich, „Jánovi“, bydleli na Vinohradské, tam jak bývala kdysi stanice přímo k hotelu Flóra. Tak jsem tam šla, oni bydleli v pátém patře.

P: Tam byla stanice tramvaje?

VŠ: Ano. A já jsem tam vyšlapala, výtah nejezdil, tak jsem vyšlapala do toho pátýho patra a zazvonila. Bylo to smíšené manželství, měli dvě děti. Nikdo mi neotvíraol, pak když jsem zvonila víc, tak vyšli sousedé a ti mi řekli, že „Jánovi“ nejsou doma. A to jsem se.. já nebrečím snadno, to jsem se rozbrečela, protože jsem si řekla - tak já jsem doma, kam teď půjdu? A pak jsem si vzpomněla, že jsem měla přítelkyni, vlastně ještě z Bratislavy...

P: Vy jste věděla, že jsou všichni, babička a děda od táty, že jsou mrtví? Říkala jste, že jste nevěděla, kam jít.

VŠ: V Praze jsem neměla žádné příbuzné. Já jsem měla v Klatovech, tam jsem nejela, jela jsem do Prahy, tady jsem byla doma. V Klatovech byli.. tedy po lágru už nebyli, ti všichni zahynuli, a pak tam byl... manžel mý tety byl Ärijec a ona se dostala ke konci války na Malou pevnost, protože ji někdo udal, že poslouchá cizinu. Tam jsem nešla. Tak jsem říkala, měla jsem jednu přítelkyni ještě z Bratislavy, takovou opravdu dobrou, my jsme se obě zajímaly o knížky, o divadlo a tak, ještě jsem jí ty věci, který jsem svoje jí tam nechala, tak jsem za ní šla, ona bydlela...

P: Jak se jmenovala?

VŠ: Jmenovala se Květa Blažková. A bydlela pod Květnicí, tam na Pankráci. Takže jsem tam šla, zazvonila, ona otevřela, měla omotaný ručník kolem hlavy, protože si ji myla. A tak jako kdyby mě byla viděla včera, tak se se mnou přivítala. Takže to bylo moc hezké, samozřejmě řekla, že tam můžu zůstat, ale já jsem si s ní neměla dohromady o čem povídat. Tak, jak jsem byly... byl tady ten hrozný rozdíl toho, co jsem zažila já a jak žila ona.

P: A ptala se vás na to, čím jste prošla?

VŠ: Jistě, to se ptala. Já jsem, protože se mě ptal každý, já jsem tyhle otázky neměla moc ráda, protože to si stejně lidi nemohli představit. Já myslím, že jsem tam mluvila, že jsem vzpomínala na nějakého Honzu Abelese mimochodem bratra pana „Blažíka“. To byl starší bratr pana „Blažíka“, kterého jsem znala z Prahy a on byl přibližně tak starý jako já a s tím jsem se občas vídala a vím, že jsme si tehdy vždycky říkali - to nikdo nemůže pochopit. Už tehdy jsme si to říkali. On zemřel „rychlé souchotě“. Vždycky přišel, zavolal nahoru, já jsem sešla dolů a pak dostal „pozdní“ souchotě a za velmi krátkou dobu zemřel. Takže já jsem jej měla ráda, to byla taková.. nevím, mě to trošku... to stejně nemohli ti lidé pochopit, co člověk prožil. A za druhé já nerada mluvím o těch tragických a strašných věcech, já to vždycky trošičku spíš zlehčuju. To taky není dobrý lidem, kteří si to neumějí představit, protože si řeknou - no tak to nebylo tak strašný. Takže jsem byla u tý Květy a teď jsem si říkala - co budu dělat. Já nic neumím, já jsem měla kvartu jenom, 4. třídu gymnázia, tak co budu dělat. Tak jsem si říkala - já mám ráda knížky, tak půjdu někam do nějakého knihkupectví. A pak jsem se sešla s nějakými známými, naší rodiny, tatínkovi to byli známí, a ten jeden mi nesmírně domlouval, říkal, že by mi to nikdy tatínek nezapomněl, kdybych  nešla dál studovat. Takže jsem nejdřív dodělala maturitu, v uvozovkách, protože kolik na to bylo času, asi tři měsíce nebo možná trochu „míň“. A pak jsem se přihlásila.. jsem si říkala, co dělat, celkem nic, matiku, fyziku, chemii, tyhle věci vůbec vlastně neznám, tak kde bych mohla být... nejméně škody. Tak jsem věděla, že tu angličtinu docela umím, českou literaturu vůbec mám ráda, tak jsem se přihlásila na angličtinu a češtinu na „nerozumím“ tady v Praze.

P: To bylo hned v tom pětačtyřicátým? Nebo to už jste nestihla?

VŠ: Ještě jsem to stihla, oni umožnili těm lidem, kteří se vraceli, aby ještě v tom roce mohli studovat.

P: Takže jste už v pětačtyřicátým začala studovat konec roku.

VŠ: Konec roku jsem začala studovat.

P: A tam jste se seznámila s manželem?

VŠ: Ne. S manželem jsem se seznámila přes nějaké známé. Zajímavé, já si z doby studia velice málo lidí pamatuju.

P: Ze spolužáků?

VŠ: Spolužáky. Nevím, to je taková.. i když jinak si pamatuju lidi,  třeba si některý z dětství pamatuju, ale já jsem neměla v té době ze školy opravdu nějaké přátele. Ta mezera tady byla a já jsem to nedovedla překonat. Já jsem vždycky byla taková, že jsem se dost těžko kamarádila, vždycky mi to trvalo dlouho a tady to bylo ještě horší. Já opravdu měla jsem velmi dobré.. ještě dneska mám přítele, kteří studovali na tom stejném gymnáziu jako já, to bylo na náměstí Jiřího z Lobkowicz, Lobkovičárna to byla tehdy. A jinak jsem měla asi tři lidi, které jsem potom ztratila.

P: A s tou Květou jste se kamarádila?

VŠ: S tou Květou jsem se kamarádila asi do té doby, ona se vdala a přišla o jedno dítě. Potom jsme ztratily.. taky když se člověk vdá, tak potom to trošičku taky záleží na těch partnerech.

P: A kde vy jste se vdávala? A kdy?

VŠ: Já jsem se vdávala 1.7.1950.

P: A jak jste se teda poznali? Nějaká romantika? Láska na první pohled?

VŠ: Ne, nebyla v tom žádná romantika. To bych neřekla. Můj muž byl starší než já, ale měli jsme moc hezký manželství.

P: A pak, když přišel čtyřicátej osmej, co jste si o tom myslela, nebo jak jste to prožívala vy?

VŠ: Já se vidím, jak sedím ve svý garsonce, totiž já jsem taky ohromně šikovný a podnikavý člověk, já jsem dostala zpátky byt svých rodičů. To byl „dvoupokojový“ byt v „Horních Stromkách“ a protože tam v domě bydlela nějaká rodina v garsonce s jedním dítětem, já jsem věděla, že mně nikdo, že se „nerozumím“ nevrátí, no tak co jsem udělala. Vyměnila jsem s nimi ten byt. A to byl můj návrh, ne jejich, musím říct. A potom jsem ještě, jak jsem mluvila o té své přítelkyni ze Žiliny, tak když se vrátila, tak v tom malým městě to muselo být ještě horší. Ona mi říkala, že prvního člověka co potkala, byl ten, kdo je hlídal, když je chytli. Tak ho udala, no a za týden byl venku. Takže ona to velice těžce nesla. A její bratr jednou byl v Praze a přišel mě navštívit, to už jsem byla v tý garsonce, a říkal, že je na tom nějak nervově špatně, tak jsem říkala - tak ať přijede, já tady mám garsonku, můžeme tady být spolu. Tak jsme bydlely spolu v téhle garsonce až do toho 50. roku, když jsem se vdala.

P: A to bylo co za kamarádku, ta se jmenovala jak, o tý už jsme mluvily?

VŠ: O tý jsme mluvily, jmenovala se „Duce Robinsonová“, ona je fotografka.

P: A v tom 48. jste říkala, že jste seděla doma...

VŠ: Vidím se, jak jsem seděla doma, já jsem na žádný tyhle věci nechodila. Já jsem se učila, to byl únor, doba zkoušek, takže jsem seděla zachumlaná v dece a poslouchala rádio. A úplně mě mrazilo, i když mi nebyla zima, protože jsem.. já prostě na tohle nikdy nebyla. takže já jsem nebyla v žádné té organizaci a...

P: Co jste si myslela o komunistech? Spousta mladejch lidí se vrátila z tábora a říkali si, že to je cesta nějaká možná.

VŠ: V táboře, ti mladí lidé, se kterými jsem se přátelila, to byli všechno levičáci, oni to snad nebyli komunisté, ale bylo to levé křídlo sionistické. Už tehdy jsem to říkala, že nedokážu jednat... být jako kůň s klapkami, abych nemohla .. kde se člověk musí dívat jenom jedním směrem. A to byl taky důvod, proč já jsem se od toho odtáhla. Jednak to „burán“ mi někdy nesedělo a ty metody, které jsem hned viděla, ty mi vždycky nebyly „po chuti“.

P: Vlastně jste to prokoukla už od začátku.

VŠ: Jestli jsem to prokoukla.. ale já jsem nikdy.. později ano, to se přiznávám, k tomu asi dojdeme, ale nikdy „nerozumím“ nadšení, říkám to „nerozumím“. Bylo to takové zklamání, protože samozřejmě ta moje generace to viděla „i když“ za války jako jedinou možnost, že ten svět bude lepší. Ale jak se to začlo rýsovat hned v tom.. já jsem vždycky hodně četla noviny, takže já jsem se o ty věci zajímala, ale.. „nerozumím“.

P: Měla jste nějaký problémy po válce s antisemitismem? Třeba pracovní? Vadilo někde při nějaký práci, že jste Židovka nebo vzpomenete si na nějaký konflikt kvůli židovství po válce?

VŠ: Jeden. Když jsem dostudovala, tak já jsem nenastoupila v Praze, protože já jsem byla vždycky tak hloupá, jako s tím bytem, my jsme si mohli napsat tři možnosti a já jsem si napsala Prahu nebo kraj Prahu, tehdy to byl kraj Praha. Protože jsem si říkala, co ti chudáci, kteří.. protože tam končili studium taky lidé, kteří už byli ženatí a takhle. No takže jsem takhle uvažovala, takže pochopitelně, že jsem se dostala do Kostelce nad Labem a tam jsem nastoupila někdy.. my jsme nastupovali ještě před dokončením studia tehdy, protože potřebovali učitele, takže jsem nastoupila v pololetí toho 50. roku. Já jsem věděla, že se budu vdávat, nicméně napsala jsem tohle, měla jsem sice svoji garsonku v Praze, ale byla jsem v Kostelci nad Labem a pak jsem čekala děcko. Tak jsem šla a požádala jsem o přeložení, tak se na mě podívali, ještě se zeptali, jakou mám aprobaci, a když jsem jim řekla - angličtina a čeština, tak se na mě podívali, jako když mám mor a řekli - no soudružko, s touhle aprobací, kdybyste měla matematiku, takhle můžete jenom jít na obec. Jsem říkala - třeba na mateřskou, já nemůžu denně, to byly ještě ty staré hrkavé autobusy, jelo se snad hodinu. Tak jsem nastoupila do obecné školy, tam mě nejdřív přemlouvali, abych si vzala 2. třídu, ale já nikdy na ty malé děti moc nebyla a vysvětlovala jsem, že neumím zpívat, neumím kreslit, tak moc dlouho mně to trvalo. Až když jsem jim řekla, že i když přijde jakýkoliv inspektor, já nezazpívám, tak jsem se dopracovala, že jsem dostala 4. třídu a to už přece jen byly ty děti trochu větší. A prošla jsem těmi školami, já vždycky říkám - já ledačíms už byl v tom božím světě, ale nemůžu říct, že čím jsem byl, tím jsem byl rád. Takže to jste se mě ptala, kdy jsem se setkala... To bylo v tom roce.. ten den se objevil v novinách článek o těch židovských lékařích, kteří usilovali o život Stalinovi, otrávili snad Gorkého a já nevím, co všechno.

P: V kterým to bylo roce? 1953?

VŠ: Já si myslím, že to muselo být dřív. Honza se narodil 1951, Helena se narodila 1952, nějak tak. No a tehdy kantoři, když měli postoupit do vyšší platový stupnice, tak byl takový pohovor na národním výboru, kde byl předseda ROH, předseda KSČ, inspektor a já nevím, kdo ještě, asi čtyři lidi tam byli. Já jsem se tam nijak zvlášť nebála, protože já jsem noviny vždycky četla, tak to jsem věděla, že jim umím říct to, co chtějí slyšet. Takže se mě tam vyptávali a pak přišlo na tu otázku, co říkám tomuhle, tomu odhalení těch židovských lékařů. No tak já jsem řekla, že teda to nechápu, že přece lékaři zachraňujou živott, takže nerozumím tomu. Ale já jsem cítila, že. zvlášť jeden z těch lidí, byl to můj pozdější ředitel.. zahnat do kouta, aby se dostali opět k té židovské otázce.

P: A oni věděli, myslíte, že vy jste Židovka?

VŠ: Já jsem to nikdy netajila, samozřejmě. Měla jsem tam spisy, jistěže to na tom... kromě toho já jsem byla opravdu „nerozumím“. No tak se mě zeptal - a ten Slánský, ten byl přece před válkou takový komunista a dneska, podívejte se - a tak dál. A to už jsem začala dostávat vztek, takže jsem řekla, že já nevím, že.. oni to trochu nahráli na to, že. na materiální stránku, že teda těm Židům se dařilo dobře. A já jsem jim řekla, že tedy nevím, koho oni znali, ale jednak já jsem byla v tom ghettu, kde ti moji přátelé, s kterými jsem tam pracovala, ti mi vždycky vyprávěli, protože Lodž byla velmi průmyslové město, většina těch otců byli krejčí, protože tam byl velkej textilní průmysl, tak vždycky někteří vzpomínali na to, že si dávali stoličku pod nohy, aby mohli pomáhat se žehlením. Takže ta úroveň, ti nežili v žádném přepychu a tak, já jsem se narodila na východním Slovensku a znala jsem tamější poměry a tam také nežili žádní boháči. Já jsem nedávno předtím byla v divadle a viděla jsem Tylovu Tvrdohlavou ženu. Tak jsem jim řekla, že si vzpomínám, že Tyl už věděl, že nelze tak paušalizovat, protože tam je jedna scéna, když takový podomní obchodník si sednul někde v hospodě a přijde nějaký radní a říká mu, aby odešel. A on se ho nato zeptá - a proč, něco jsem vám udělal? A ten nějak na to neodpoví nebo hrubě odpoví a on mu na to říká - to máte něco proti mně, Ezechielovi, anebo proti Židům? A on tedy nechápe tu otázku a on doplňuje - no jestli máte něco proti mně, tak to můžete mít, ale Židé, že dělají tyhle obchodníky, vždyť oni nic jinýho nemůžou. Oni nemůžou se ženit jak chtějí, oni se nemůžou stěhovat, oni nesmějí vlastnit půdu, takže jim nezbyde nic jiného, než dělat tohle.

P: To bylo v tý hře tohleto?

VŠ: To bylo v tý hře a tohle jsem jim podala a byl pokoj, už pak nebyly žádné další otázky. A já jsem to potom u toho ředitele učila, hrozně nerada jsem tam šla, ale co jsem měla dělat, a on mně tykal, já jsem mu vždycky vykala. Ale nakonec vím, že bylo jedno setkání těch kantorů z té školy z Vršovic, kde on seděl sám u stolu, už byl starej, hluchej, a mně to nedalo a sedla jsem si k němu. Tak pak jsem mu tak odpustila. Tak to byla taková chvíle, na kterou nikdy nezapomenu. To skutečně člověk cítil „jak jehly“. Ale jinak já jsem vůči sobě necítila.. oni to věděli, myslím, i žáci, protože když jsem něco říkala o válce, tak samozřejmě, že jsem taky zabrousila do svých zkušeností.

P: Vy jste vystudovala Filozofickou fakultu a s tím jste učila.

VŠ: S tím jsem učila, jenže jsem se dostala nejdřív na základní školu a pak jsem se teprve dostala. nejdřív na druhý stupeň základní školy, jenže to byla ta 4., 5., potom jsem se dostala do tý vyšší a potom až.. to bylo dost dlouho, jsem takhle byla, pak jsem se dostala na gymnázium. „nerozumím“ na průmyslovku.

P: Slavili jste doma, vy jste říkala, že měl rád Židy, váš manžel, slavila jste nějaký svátky?

VŠ: Ne, neslavila. Chodila jsem na „Roš ha-šana“ a Jom kipur, to jsem chodila do synagogy, ale jinak jsme neslavili.

P: Šabes, nic takovýho.

VŠ: Ne.

P: A co dělal vlastně váš muž, čím se on živil?

VŠ: On byl, v Pragovce pracoval, tehdy to bylo v  Pragovce jako „inženýr“.

P: A měli jste auto?

VŠ: Ne. Jo, měli, ale až později.

P: Měli jste nějaký přátele? Přátelili jste se se Židy jenom, měla jste v tom nějakej výběr nebo vám to bylo jedno? Prostě to byli kamarádi.

VŠ: Židů tolik nebylo. Myslím, že o té Hance Vosátkové jsem mluvila.

P: Jestli to židovství bylo nějaký kritérium pro vás, proč se s tím člověkem třeba přátelit víc než s někým, kdo Žid nebyl.

VŠ: Takovou nejlepší přítelkyní byla Hanka Vosátková, to jsem, myslím, ani neříkala. Ona žila ve smíšeném manželství, její muž byl lékařem v Jindřichově Hradci, oni se rozvedli a ona tedy musela jít za války do koncentráku, byla v Terezíně. A její syn byl v rodině mého muže, takže takto jsme se přátelily. Potom ona odešla do Ameriky, tam měla syna, on emigroval, v 47. odešel teda legálně, Hanka ho poslala do nějakého kurzu, aby se naučil řeči a poznal svět. Potom, to bylo někdy.. 80.. já si přesně ten rok nepamatuju, nejdřív tam odjela na návštěvu, a to si taky pamatuju, jak se toho velice bála, protože ho opustila jako velice mladého a už byl ženatý a měl dítě, když se s ním měla zase setkat.

P: A oni spolu nebyli v žádným kontaktu?

VŠ: Byli. A Hanka tam jela na rok nejdřív, potom se vrátila a zase řekla, že teda pojede a nevrátí se, jenže pak přišel rok 1968, ona už měla zakoupenou letenku.

P: Takže v 60. tam nejdřív odjela a ..

VŠ: V 60. tam odjela a to se vrátila, kolem pětašedesátého roku, myslím, že to bylo. A v tom 68. už tam zůstala, pak onemocněla a zemřela. Já když jezdím do Ameriky, tak „nerozumím - jezdím k jejímu synu“.

P: Ten bydlí kde?

VŠ: On bydlí v Utahu, Salt Lake City.

P: Kolikrát už jste byla v Americe?

VŠ: Asi pětkrát. V New Yorku se přesedá, protože mám v NY zase nějaké přátele, tak většinou.. ale někdy taky jsem jela přímo.

P: Teď bych se zeptala na takovej zběžnej váš rodinnej život s manželem a dětmi po tý válce. Jezdili jste někam na dovolenou nebo měli jste nějakou chatu, jak to tady bylo zvykem?

VŠ: Jezdili jsme na dovolenou, obyčejně do Krkonoš. Tam jsme vždycky jezdili.. tam pronajímal někdo pokoje v jedné chatě ve Svatém Petru a tam jsme obyčejně jezdili. Předtím ovšem, ještě když byly děti docela malé, tak jsme jezdili do Chocně, můj muž je z Chocně. A to ještě žil jeho tatínek a sestra, ta potom zemřela a ten tatínek taky, takže potom jsme tam přestali jezdit. A potom jsme jezdívali do Krkonoš, až do té doby, když můj muž měl infarkt, to bylo v roce.. začátkem 60. let.. pak jsme si koupili chatu, právě proto, že tedy ty kopce jsme si museli odříci. Koupili jsme si chatu na Sázavě, to místo se jmenuje „Samopře“, je to mezi městem Sázavou a „Ledečkem“, nad jezem. Tam jsme jezdívali, muž tu chatu měl moc rád, já ne tak moc, protože.. bylo tam všechno krásný, koukala jste na jez, kolem nás nikdo nebyl, ale byla jsem tam sama. Tam nebyly chaty kolem, to nebyla žádná osada a můj muž mi vždycky říkal, když jsem zabručela, tak říkal - to chceš, aby ti koukali do talíře, tak jsem uznala, že nechci, aby mi koukali do talíře, takže jsme tu chatu měli. Když potom můj muž umřel, v 1981, tak jsem tam přestala jezdit. Můj syn se tehdy rozvedl a taky tam nejezdil, protože můj syn měl tu chatu vždycky moc rád. tak jsem si říkala - tak já tu chatu pronajmu nebo prodám. A můj syn mě hrozně žádal, abych ji neprodávala, tak jsem ji neprodala a potom, když se podruhé.. tedy on žije s přítelkyní, tak od té doby on tam jezdí, moc to vylepšili, je tam elektrika, je tam komfort a já ta jezdím poměrně málo, mně tam ten můj muž chybí. Ještě když jsem měla „Blekinku“, pejska. Oni mají tedy pejska, když tam jsem, tak jejich Besinka tam je se mnou, ale je to trošičku.. člověk je tam sám, tam na mě víc padá to, že jsem tam sama, než tady.

P: A on má děti, syn?

VŠ: Nemá. Tak se mně „nerozumím“ jedny známé, to jsem se tedy vlastně přes nějakého vzdáleného příbuzného z Košic, jenž studoval tady na medicíně, už ji pomalu končil, a ten mě seznámil se svou přítelkyní, oni se potom rozešli, ale já mou přítelkyní byla do konce jejího života a ta mi moc chybí. Pak je to „Duca“ v Bratislavě, která je daleko, dneska už to jezdění pro ni není snadné, ještě nějaké přátele jsem měli.

P: Slavili jste spolu třeba Silvestra, s těmi kamarády?

VŠ: Ano, to jsme slavili obyčejně. Právě s těmi „Matějcovými“, o nichž teď jsem mluvila. Máme děti ve stejném věku přibližně, dokonce Helena a Jana jsou od sebe snad týden, takže bylo hodně těch styčných bodů. Ona byla lékařka, její muž byl právník. Pak s jednou...

P: A ti „Matějcovi“, to nebyli Židi.

VŠ: Ne, to nebyli. Ale říkám, poznala jsem je přes.. teda Anču jsem poznala přes.. ale podle mýho názoru Anča opravdu byla jedna z těch, která nebyla vůbec antisemitka, měla víc těch židovských přátel. A potom ještě taková dobrá přítelkyně dodnes je jedna z těch kantorek, s kterými jsem učila, „Hanka“, s tou se scházíme a chodíváme...

P: To je ta Vosátková?

VŠ: Ne, ta je zase jiná. Já jsem měla „na Hanky nerozumím“. A pak Hanka „Proprová“, o té jsem, myslím, mluvila asi v té knížce, když tam říkám, možná, že jsem ji tam přímo nejmenovala. V Lodži byly takzvané „gasküche“, protože nebylo palivo a chodilo se vařit a ohřívat vodu. A v té jedné.. tam, kde my jsme bydleli, tak tam na jednom rohu a na druhém, byly tam dvě „gasküche“, shodou okolností já jsem vždycky chodila do té jedné. A do té druhé já jsem, nevím proč, nikdy nešla. A vím, že maminka mi vyprávěla, že tam je jedna mladá dívka, Polka, samozřejmě polská Židovka, která je k ní moc hodná. „nerozumím“. A protože samozřejmě nebylo tak lehké pro ty přistěhovalce, kterými jsme byli, v tom prostředí mně každý dával... mnoho lidí si zachovalo takovou určitou nenávist dokonce, „řekla bych“  vůči Polákům. Já ne, já vůbec nemám tenhle pocit nikdy, takže maminka říkala, že tam je taková velmi hodná dívka, která ji vždycky pustí k tomu plameni, nenechá ji tam zbytečně čekat a tak. Já jsem ji nikdy nepoznala. A jedno, to bylo Honzovi tak.. ještě mu asi nebyl rok nebo rok asi, jsem jela s kočárkem, bydlela jsem ve Vršovicích, a najednou mě někdo osloví, jestli nejsem Pollaková, jestli jsem nebyla v Lodži. A byla to ta dívka, o které maminka mluvila. Ta mě poznala podle mé maminky. Já nevím, proč, já jsem víc podobná tatínkovi, ale jsou asi určité rysy, které ten druhý člověk pozná. A my jsme se přátelily až do té doby, dokud „Hanka nerozumím zemřela nerozumím“. „Při náletu zemřela.“ Jako rodiny jsme se moc nepřátelili, protože její muž byl takový.. no prostě s mým mužem ani se mnou si moc nerozuměl. Byl takový trošku podivín. Takže já jsem s Hankou se přátelila, ona k nám chodila, já jsem tam chodívala, já jsem dokonce některý ty jejich děti učila a vím o nich dodnes.

P: Takže vaše děti uměly perfektně anglicky odmala?

VŠ: Já jsem učila své děti anglicky, děti i vnuky.

P: A vychovávala jste je v nějakejch židovskejch tradicích?

VŠ: Ne, to ne. Ale věděli, ano, když se zeptaly.. jednou se mě vnuk zeptal, ještě byl malej, co to jsou Židi. A já jsem řekla - tak se na mě podívej, jsem jiná než někdo jinej?

P: Ještě mi řekněte, jak jste na tom byli, jak jste byli situovaný třeba finančně?

VŠ: Měli jsme dva platy, takže v té době to bylo poměrně dobré. Můj muž neměl špatný plat, ale ne nějaký.. ne, nehladověli jsme, měli jsme všechno, co jsme potřebovali.

P: Mám pocit.. ve 48. vznikla Izrael, že jo?

VŠ: Ano. A já jsem si dopisovala celý čas s tou svou tetou, kterou jsem potom.. to jsem vám, myslím, vyprávěla, jak jsem ji navštívila rok po manželově smrti.

P: A to byla teta.. jak se jmenovala?

VŠ: Byla tam „Böži“, to je Alžběta.

P: A byla jste ráda, že Izrael vznikla? Měla jste z toho radost nebo jste se o to nezajímala.

VŠ: To ještě tady „Böži“ byla, myslím. Oni odešli ve 48. To bylo těsně po únoru. Já nevím, já jsem to snad až tak.. já jsem nikdy nebyla sionistka. Ani tedy moji rodiče.

P: Vůbec jste neuvažovala, že byste tam šla bydlet, žít.

VŠ: Ne, můj muž pak p roce 1968 o otm uvažoval, já jsem mu to rozmluvila, ale já jsem o tom. já jsem tomu nikdy „neuvěřila“. Vím, že teta „Böži“ chtěla, abych jela s ní, protože to byla doba ještě, když jsem se svým mužem chodila, byla tuze zamilovaná.

P: Co se vám na něm líbilo, proč jste si ho brala? Čím vás zaujal, po všech těch vašich zkušenostech.

VŠ: To je dost těžká otázka. Měla jsem ho ráda.

P: Pak jestli jste nějak vnímala izraelský války.

VŠ: Ano, ty jsem vnímala.

P: Psalo se tady vůbec o tom? V českejch novinách.

VŠ: Já teď přemýšlím, ale myslím, že se psalo. Asi.. tak jistě, tendenčně, oni byli ti, kteří zapříčinili, kteří napadli a tak.

P: Byla jste v Izraeli? I před 89. nebo až po revoluci?

VŠ: Byla několikrát. Myslím, že jsem vám to vyprávěla, že jsem byla v tom roce.. rok po manželově smrti, jak jsem dostala to povolení, tak to jsem byla, to bylo poprvé, a potom podruhé jsem tam byla v tom.. obec dělala ten zájezd a pak jsem tam byla určitě ještě asi třikrát. Žije tam ještě syn toho jednoho mého bratrance, ten má velkou rodinu, 6 dětí, ale jeho žena neumí „nerozumím“, „on“ umí maďarsky i česky i slovensky, s dětmi se dorozumím anglicky, ale s ní je to těžší. Jinak já spíš tam jezdím za těmi.. hlavně za tou jednou z těch.. ony si tak říkají „děvčinta z Halstadtu“, děvčata z Meziměstí. Bohužel, dneska „nerozumím“.

P: Vy jste vstoupila do strany potom později?

VŠ: Já jsem vstoupila do strany, to bylo v 60. letech, víceméně muž mě k tomu přiměl, protože...

P: On tam byl od toho 48.?

VŠ: On tam byl po 48. A já jsem po tom 60. roce, nevím přesně, který rok to byl, ale pak jsem se hned dostala na gymnázium. Tak pak to najednou šlo, předtím jsem...

P: A po 68. jste tam taky byli.

VŠ: Po 68. nás vyhodili. Jsme byli vyloučeni oba, můj muž i já.

P: A zůstala jste na gymnáziu? Nebo to jste byla na tý průmyslovce?

VŠ: To jsem byla na tý průmyslovce, zůstala jsem tam do 70. roku, to mě nejdřív přeložili na jinou školu a v 70. roce.. ne, to bylo asi dva roky potom, nejdřív to vyřešili jenom tím, že mě přeložili, a potom, asi 1971 nebo 1972 mě.. to jsem učila v Ječný a přišel jednou ředitel a že se nedá nic dělat a já jsem říkala tehdy, když ten výnos o tom, že kdo má dvěstěpětapadesátku nebo já jsem spíš dospěla do toho věku, že jsem mohla použít tu dvěstěpětapadesátku a jít do důchodu.

kazeta 1, str. B

VŠ: Tak jsem jim to podepsala s tím, že půjdu do důchodu, ale že tam jdu nerada. A je zajímavý, jak se našly všechny ty moje.. nebo aspoň některé doklady po 89., jak jsme dostali zpátky, „tenhle doklad tam měli“. Samozřejmě co pan ředitel stopil, je jasný, že jsem to tak formulovala, proč bych tam psala, že chci do důchodu.

P: Četli jste.. měli jste nějaký cesty, jak se dostat k nějaký samizdatový literatuře nebo byli jste v nějakým styku s disidentským prostředím?

VŠ: Něco se dostalo sem.

P: Poslouchali jste Svobodnou Evropu?

VŠ: Jistě, kdo neposlouchal. Já musím říct, že my jsme radši poslouchali BBC než Svobodnou Evropu.

P: Takže když přišel 89., tak předpokládám... teď už by mě jenom zajímalo, předpokládám, že vaše reakce na 89. byla pozitivní, že jste z toho měli radost.

VŠ: Jistě.

P: A jste zklamaná z toho, co přišlo po revoluci nebo ne?

VŠ: To je zase těžká otázka. Nechtěla bych, aby bylo to, co bylo předtím. Chtěla bych, aby to bylo lepší, aby to bylo slušnější, tak asi jak si to člověk představoval.

P: Máte nějaký.. vaše děti byly v tom věku, že mohly být na Národní v 1989?

VŠ: Ne, to už Helena přece měla děti. Zuzka se narodila 1981 a Ondra 1986, oni jsou pět let od sebe.

P: A pamatujete si, jak jsou různý takový zážitky, jako spousta lidí si pamatuje, co konkrétně dělalo, když se dovědělo, že zemřela Lady Diana a tak, tak pamatujete si, co jste dělali, když jste se dověděli, co se na tý Národní děje? To jste se asi dověděli z rádia. Asi jste museli být v šoku, ne?

VŠ: Já se to dověděla z rádia. No v šoku.. v napětí určitě, člověk čekal, co z toho bude.

P: Změnil se nějak váš život po 89.? Máte pocit, že se nějak změnil?

VŠ: Já už jsem byla předtím v důchodu. „nerozumím“ že jsem mohla vyjet, že jsem byla v Izraeli, byla jsem v Americe, což jsou dvě velmi důležité věci. „nerozumím“ se rozčiluje, že jsem „nemohla jet předtím“.

P: Ale teď se člověk rozčiluje tak jako zdravě.

VŠ: No zdravě.. rozčiluje se. Je to člověku velice líto a já často říkám, a teď nemyslím ta léta poválečná, ale myslím ještě za války, jak jsme si představovali, jaký ten svět bude. Jak bude spravedlivý, jak nebudou žádné války, přece po téhle zkušenosti se tyto věci už nemůžou opakovat. To jsme si pořád říkali - jestli se dožijeme, to jsme nevěděli, ale s tím jsme počítali, že když se dožijeme, tak ten svět bude krásný. Takže to je to určit zklamání, že lidstvo je nepoučitelné.

P: Začala jste nějak víc chodit na obec třeba?

VŠ: Ano.

P: Vy jste předtím byla přihlášená na obci za členku?

VŠ: Já jsem byla přihlášená.. v 80. letech jsem se přihlásila.

P: A chodíte tam třeba na ššábesový večeře?

VŠ: Nechodím. Na svátky velký.

P: A jezdíte s nimi na výlety některý?

VŠ: Taky jsem s nimi byla, ale oni to teď moc nedělají. Vy myslíte ty pobytový? Ne, to jsem nebyla. Ještě jsem zapomněla jednu známou, Židovku, „Magda Benešová“. Ta taky už zemřela. Jsou to většinou, bohužel, člověk zůstává v tomhle věku sám, to je to nepříjemné. Jedna z nepříjemných věcí stáří.

P: Ještě se zeptám, vy jste dostala určitě nějaký kompenzace ze všech těch fondů, co tady byly, tak to bylo asi příjemný, ne, i když to bylo úplně pozdě, ale bylo to fajn.

VŠ: Jistě, hlavně protože je to takhle pravidelné. Dá se na to spolehnout.

P: A teď jenom uděláme ty fotky.

VŠ: Tak tady vám dávám ta jména. Nejstarší byl Izidor, to je i česky, myslím. Sereny je Serena, taky existuje, Irma, to myslím, že taky, Kálmán je Koloman, Ica je Ilona, což jsem netušila, a Šári je Šarlota. Helena, to byla moje maminka, a tady jsem napsala (pozn. Pavly - Pišta).. to je bratranec, sem patří Miklóš, což je Mikuláš. Zajímavý je, že já si občas ty dva pletu, protože oba krásně zpívali. Oba žili potom v Budapešti.

P: Ica, Helena, Böži tam byla, Miklóš a Mancy.

VŠ: Böži je Alžběta a Mancy je Marie. Tak pod těmi českými.

P: Já se podívám na to, co byste mi půjčila.

VŠ: Je to 4. třída židovské obecné, tedy židovské lidové školy v Žilině a je to rok 1934. „nerozumím“ nás učil i ve třetí třídě. V pátý jsme měli Brunera, a to byl nějakej „Goldberger“ nebo který nás měl ve 4. třídě. To byla velmi dobrá škola, tam chodili nějací Nežidé. V Žilině jsme byli... no my jsme všude byli tak asi 4-5 let, víc ne.

P: Vy jste teda druhá z pravý strany toho ředitele.

VŠ: Ano a vedle je ta moje přítelkyně „Duca“. To je Magdaléna.

P: Měli jste tady už v tý škole nějaký lásky?

VŠ: Ale jistě, teď ho nemůžu najít. Já jsem si na to vůbec nevzpomněla.

P: Tahleta holčička vypadá velmi nežidovsky.

VŠ: To nemusí být, já jsem jednu takovou.. ta nechodila se mnou, ta byla starší, Neubauerová, ta zahynula, ta byla přesně takový typ. Blondýna, copy nosila, to není podmínka.

P: A to fotil asi nějakej fotograf školní? Koukám, jak máte pod sebou ty deky, jak tam seděj ty děti, tak mají pod sebou dečky.

VŠ: Asi jak se třídy vždycky fotily. Ano. Tohle byl „Fábry“, ten žil potom v Praze, k jeho mamince jsem chodila na francoužstinu. On neměl vlasy. Už takhle malej, mu vypadaly nějak. „Byl“ nějak nemocnej, ale to byla nějaká... Myslím, že byl lékař, je pochovanej na židovským hřbitově. Já si marně vzpomínám na to jméno, toho kluka, „Janči“ se jmenoval, Janko.

P: A ta vaše kámoška, ta se příjmením jmenovala jak?

VŠ: Robinsonová. Možná tady bude mít.. asi k těm jejím osmdesátinám chtějí udělat výstavu zase. A ona taky vyšla knížka Zamilované obrázky, Zazděné obrazy, ona byla někdy v těch 80. letech, ne to bylo dřív, byla v Izraeli a byla tam vyslaná nějakou agenturou, ne českou, a fotila tam. A předmluvu k té knížce jí měl napsat Lustig. A ta předmluva i ty fotky se ztratily. Potom úplně náhodně nějaká příbuzná Oty Pavla se zmínila někde v nějakém rozhovoru, já už přesně nevím, že ty fotky byly zazděný u nich na chatě, i s tou předmluvou. A to se našlo, ta výstava byla v Bratislavě, v Židovským muzeu, a je to zase úplně jiný Izrael, protože to muselo být před rokem 1986. Nebo kolem roku 1986, protože potom už nemohla jezdit. Byla výstava a je to knížka. Ona byla i v Osvětimi jednou fotit a my jsme spolu bydleli, v těch Stromkách, než já jsem se vdala, pak ona zase odešla do Bratislavy.

P: A ona je stejnej ročník asi.

VŠ: Je stejnej ročník, ona je květnová, já jsem zářijová.

P: A vy jste spolu prošly i těma táborama?

VŠ: Ne. Ona prošla Osvětimí a pak se dostala zase nějakými cestičkami do Bergen-Belsenu a tam byla osvobozena. Si vzpomíná, že když se probudila v nemocnici v bílé posteli, tak si říkala, že je v nebi. Že nějak omdlela.

P: Našla jste ho?

VŠ: Ne, já si nevzpomínám, myslím, že měl brýle. O tom vím, že ještě žije, někde venku. Vezmeme to spíš od konce. Takže tohle je tatínek za 1. světový války.

P: To je dvojka. On má uniformu. To byl jako normální voják, povolanej.

VŠ: Myslím, že byl důstojník, protože měl vysokou školu. Tady je ještě mladý, tatínek byl rozený 1884.

P: A z kterýho roku je ta fotka?

VŠ: To já nevím. Tady je „zu eineramen“ napsáno, k zarámování. Někdy za války to musí být. Byl na italské frontě.

P: Teď vezmeme další. Tak to je trojka.

VŠ: Tohle je maminka, první zleva, vedle ní je Šarlota a z levý strany dole je to Ica, to je ta Ilona, a tohle je Alžběta, Böži, úplně vpravo. A ta uprostřed dole je nějaká přítelkyně. Ani nevím, kolik jim tehdy mohlo být. Já bych řekla, že to je někdy tak po první světový válce. Až teta Böži mně dala, já jsem je neměla tyhle fotky, žádný. To bude nějaký košický studio, určitě, to bylo v Košicích.

P: Tak, 4. fotku.

VŠ: To jsou zase holky. Zleva je to Mancy, ta Marie, pak je Alžběta, Böži, a to je Ica, Ilona. Ano, to je jasně později. To budou 20. léta. Předpokládám, že to bylo taky v Košicích, protože obě tyhle tety žily v Košicích. Jeslti tam ještě žila Böži.. možná, že Böži už žila v Bratislavě, to nevím přesně.

P: A ta Böži se narodila kdy?

VŠ: Myslím 1902, tuším. Rozená byla Paszternáková a pak se jmenovala „Schafferová“.

P: A provdala se někdy ještě před válkou?

VŠ: Ano.

P: A ona neměla vlastní děti?

VŠ: To jsem vám taky vyprávěla, ne, oni neměli děti, ona měla děti moc ráda, mě měla ráda jako svou dceru a já jsem jí vždycky říkala, že to je moje druhá maminka. Já jsem ji měla moc ráda a taky jsem si s ní dopisovala až do konce jejího života.

P: A ona měla nějaký zaměstnání nebo vystudovala něco?

VŠ: Předpokládám, že měla nějakou obchodní školu a byla zaměstnaná, pracovala jako účetní ve firmě s elektrickými spotřebiči v Bratislavě, „Süč“ se jmenoval její šéf a ta firma jak se jmenovala, na tu si nevzpomenu.

P: A ona byla taky v Osvětimi?

VŠ: Ne, ona byla někde v Novákách, na Slovensku oni byli a potom, když vypuklo povstání, tak se skrývali po těch horách slovenských. S manželem, zachránili se tedy oba a 1948 odešli oba do Izraele.

P: Tak můžeme na pátou fotku.

VŠ: Hádejte, jak to asi může být stará, copak já vím? Je to Bratislava, to jsem já, tři roky mi můžou být. V tom tmavým je maminka, v tom bílým je teta Böži. A ten pán nevím, já v něm nikoho nepoznávám, to není „Vili“, manžel tety Böži.

P: Viliam Schaffer se jmenoval? A kde tohle je, to je Bratislava? To jste šli na nějakou nedělní procházku nebo co.

VŠ: To je v Bratislavě, to je nějaká pekáreň asi.

P: A v kolikátých letech to může být focený?

VŠ: Já jsem 1924 rozená, tak to mohlo být tak 1927.

P: Teďko šestou, piknikovou. Zleva od toho pána je tam kdo?

VŠ: To je manžel tety Böži... tohle je teta Böži, ta uprostřed, co se kouká jinam. Úplně vlevo je její manžel, vedle ní je Koloman a mezi nimi je Ica a její muž a to je ta Mancy. A tohle musela být 30. léta. To je na nějakým výletě, maminka tam není, takže to asi bylo někde.. nevím.

P: Takže zleva, vlevo je manžel Böži, tohle je Ica, tady je Koloman, Böži, tohle je manžel tý Icy, a Marie, Mancy.

VŠ: Já si nevzpomenu na jméno toho Icyna manžela, příjmením se jmenoval, myslím, Klein.

P: Taky to byl Žid. A oni měli děti?

VŠ: Taky neměli děti.

P: A o těch sourozencích maminky povídáte v tom vyprávění, co se s nimi stalo za války, v tom muzeu?

VŠ: Ale tam jsem to říkala.

P: Tak teď sedmičku.

VŠ: To jsou taky 30. léta. Zleva je maminka, babička - její máma, dědeček - její táta a můj táta. Táta byl malej, ano. Já jsem po něm malá. Já jsem byla strašně nešťastná, že jsem „moc nevyrostla“. Já jsem skutečně byla velice malá, děti si na mě ukazovaly, že už chodím do školy, a já jsem tehdy nechtěla do školy potom chodit. Byl to můj celoživotní handicap, můj celoživotní mindrák, až teď je mi to úplně jedno. Moc jsem se kvůli tomu trápila.

P: A kde to je?

VŠ: To jsou Mariánské Lázně, kolonáda asi. To jsme asi na nějaký dovolený, ano, tam naši jezdili... zapomněla jsem říct, že tatínek k těm... toho jednoho velkýho koníčka, a to bylo fotografování. To už je koníček, který já si pamatuju taky dobře.

P: A taky vás to chytlo, to focení? Dělala jste to někdy?

VŠ: Fotila jsem, takhle když jezdím, tak jsem dost fotila. A minulý rok jsem měla nějakou depresi a vyhodila jsem spoustu fotek, měla jsem jeden kufr plný jenom z těch cest po Americe. Jsem říkala, ať to nemusí vyhazovat děti. To byla spíš krajina než... já jsem měla hezký fotky.

P: Teď vezmu osmičku.

VŠ: To je ta teta Mancy, to jsou 30. léta, tak kolem roku 1935. Uprostřed teta Mancy, to je Duca, to jsem já a to je moje maminka, tady vzadu s tou kabelkou. Je to někde pod Rozsutcem, to je Malá Fatra u Žiliny, jak je Terchová, já myslím, že je to někde pod Rozsutcem. Tam jsme na nějakým výletě.

P: Co to máte za kolo, čeho se to držíte?

VŠ: To byla taková... tím se házelo. To bylo místo talíře. Jsme blbli. Tu fotku dělal tatínek.

P: Devítka.

VŠ: Tuhle taky dělal tatínek. Maminka u nás v obýváku v Žilině, čili to mohl být tak ten rok 1935.

P: A tyhle dva obrázky dole, to jsou vás dětí?

VŠ: Ne, já mám dojem, že to byly takový gobelíny dva, pokud se pamatuju.

P: A tyhle obrazy jste s sebou brali všechny, když jste se stěhovali, nebo to patřilo k tý...

VŠ: Ne, to se samozřejmě stěhovalo. Všude vždycky.

P: Koukám, tady krajkovej ubrus.

VŠ: Ano, ještě jsem měla takhle ten jeden, co dělala maminka, která si myslím, že ho dokonce... tenhle asi nedělala, maminka spíš háčkovala, pletla, jinej, ten je moc hezkej, mám ho tady někde. My jsme měli, myslím, 4pokoj, to bylo v tom domě přímo, kde byl ten tatínkův úřad, tam jsme měli 4pokojovej byt, moc hezkej. V Žilině jsme byli všichni moc rádi. Maminka tam měla společnost, právě s „výjimkou“ tý Ducy, ony se přátelily celý rodiny. A Prešov, to už jsem taky říkala, to už nebylo ono. A Bratislavu jsem měla moc ráda, i když jsem tam tedy byla jenom do třetí třídy, třetí třídu už jsem dělala v Žilině. Na to jsem si pamatovala, ačkoli když jsem tam přišla po válce do Bratislavy a šla jsem se podívat, kde jsme to bydleli, tak mi to připadalo, že tam byl takový obrovský dvůr, a on ten dvůr je takový malý. A ty vzdálenosti byly najednou malý.

P: Desítka.

VŠ: Tady jsem s tatínkem já, to mám ten fajnovej účes.

P: To je z kterýho roku, myslíte. To vám tu může být tak osm?

VŠ: Asi tak. Je to u téhož křesla pravděpodobně nebo u druhého, který bylo naproti. Ty křesla jsme taky stěhovali. To je určitě v Žilině.

P: Myslíte, že tohle fotila máma?

VŠ: To je možný, že to tatínek dělal samospouští. Protože tatínek někdy dělal samospouští ty fotky. To nevím určitě.

P: Mazlil se rád táta?

VŠ: Táta ne, máma jo. Maminka jo, Böži ano, a ty tetky moje, ty ano. Tatínek byl takovej, že pohladil, to jo, ale na nějaký... možná že si to tak nepamatuju, asi jo, měl rád, když jsem k němu přišla a sedla jsem si mu na klín. A na ty šaty si taky pamatuju, byly takový kostkovaný a měly „tadytu“ velikánskou mašli. To muselo být někdy na obecný, to znamená, já jsem tam obecnou dělala 3., 4., 5.

P: Jedenáctka.

VŠ: Tohle mohl být tak rok 1939-40 a je to... maminka stojí za mnou, vlevo v těch pruhovaných šatech jsem já, protože jsem se opalovala na terase, samozřejmě, a to je ta paní Heřmanová. To je ta paní Heřmanová, jak ji znáte. Ona byla... příbuzná, to byla sestřenice mýho tatínka.

P: Takže ona byla ve věku maminky?

VŠ: Ne, ona byla mladší. Ona už byla vdaná. Já tam mám ještě jednu fotku v tý době, to taky dělal tatínek. To jsem já, tady je tatínek, tadyhle je Máňa Benešová a tohle je její bratr, ten zahynul. Tohle je tatínkův bratranec. Takže ona nebyla sestřenice, protože Emil byl bratranec, čili ona byla od tátovy sestřenice dcera. To byla krátce vdaná. Tohle je na terase našeho bytu, když jsme bydleli v těch Stromkách. To je v Praze. To mohl být rok 1939-40. A teď si říkám, možná že to táta nefotil, že to fotil Mánin manžel, si myslím. To asi bude, tak proto tam není.

P: Takže jedenáctku nefotil táta, ale Mánin manžel. To byl ten Klein? Ne, to byl Icy manžel.

VŠ: Mánin manžel se jmenoval Heřman, Herman vlastně.  A potom podruhý se vdala a ten měl taky jméno Herman. Tak se jmenoval Heřman tedy. Byli nějak příbuzní, byli nějak příbuzní taky s Ljubou Hermanovou.

To je ve Špindlu, v tom Svatým Petrovi, jak jsme jezdili. A tu Duca ofotila, mám ji tam za rámečkem, byla jediná, než jsem ještě dostala potom nějaké zpátky.

P: Tohle teda na to kořenu, to je po válce, kdy asi, to už jste byli svoji? Kdo to vlastně fotil?

VŠ: Ano. Samospoušť, to bylo ještě než jsme se vzali, to vím, to bylo ve Špindlu na kameni. Tak asi to bylo ještě předtím, než jsme se vzali, na dovolený jsme vždycky jezdili i s dětmi. je možný, že to mohl být ten rok 1950, ještě než jsme měli děti. Napište 50. léta.

P: A nějakou současnou fotku vaši byste měla? Ještě se zeptám, vy jste dělala rozhovor pro muzeum, a to jste dělala asi tak 1995? Nevíte, devadesátý léta.

VŠ: Já jsem si vzpomněla, já tu mám ještě pasovku.

P: A oslovili vás třeba od Spielberga, jak to natáčeli? To bylo taky někdy v 90., na začátku 90. let?

VŠ: Ano, to jsem taky dělala. Ten rok si přesně nepamatuju.
 

Faina Minkova
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: November 2002

Faina Minkova looks young for her years. She is a sociable woman and agreed to tell us about her family. She lives in a two-storied mansion in a quiet neighborhood near the center of town. This mansion used to belong to her father. He received it when he was a KGB officer. There are fruit trees and raspberry bushes in front of the house. Her father was fond of gardening. Faina and her older sister Elizabeth occupy the first floor, and Faina's daughter and her family live on the second floor. They keep their history alive through family photographs and archives.

I know very little about my father's parents. They died when he was young. My grandfather, Yankel Minkov, was born in the town of Krasnoluki, in Belarus in the 1870s. My grandmother, Sarrah Minkova, was the same age as him. She came from a different town, but I have no information about it. They lived in Krasnoluki. My grandfather was a farmer. He kept a few cows. He sold kosher dairy products. My grandmother sold these products at the market twice a week. She had Jewish and Ukrainian clients. My grandparents had eight children. Only four of them survived the war.

My father's brother Aron, born in 1895, was their oldest child. The next one was Zina, born in 1897. My father, Yuzik Minkov, was born in 1911. The youngest, Tania (- her Jewish name was Teibl -) was born in 1915. They were the only ones whom I knew personally. My father had three more sisters: Beilia, born in 1900, Tzypa, born in 1905, and Fania, born in 1909 - (I was named after her) - and one more brother: his name was Pinia and he was born in 1907. All I know about the rest of my father's siblings is what my mother told me. She knew my father's family well. Aron and Zina were her friends. My father was raised in their families, who were my mother's neighbors in Orsha.

One of my relatives, whose mother was my grandfather's cousin, told me that my grandfather was a very difficult and almost unbearable man. My grandmother, who was a nice and kind woman, suffered a lot. If my grandfather didn't like something he would pull the tablecloth of the table with all the dishes and food on it.

My grandparents weren't religious. My father's cousin, who lived in Leningrad, told me about them. She remembered them very well. They observed some traditions, of course. My grandmother cooked traditional food. They celebrated Pesach. My father remembered his father bringing home big bags of matzah before Pesach. One of the Jewish families living in Krasnoluki made matzah. I know for sure that they didn't observe all traditions. My father and his brothers weren't circumcised; they didn't have bar mitzvah, which is one of the basic rules in Jewish religion. My father's family spoke Yiddish.

There were only a few Jewish families in Krasnoluki. There was no synagogue or cheder in town. My father and his sisters studied at the Russian lower secondary school in Krasnoluki. They spoke fluent Russian with no accent. My father also knew Yiddish well, but he didn't know Hebrew.

In 1919, during the Civil War 1, a military unit of the White Guards 2 came to town. All Jews, including my grandmother and her children hid, but my grandfather recalled that he had left his cowshed open. He went back out to lock it and was beaten to death by the Whites. Shortly after his death my grandmother died. My father was 8 years old at the time, and his younger sister Tania was 5.

By that time my father's older brother Aron was already married. He lived with his family in the town of Orsha, on the border of Russia and Belarus. He was a leather specialist. My Aunt Zina and her husband also lived in Orsha. Her husband Gorfinkel, a Jewish man, was a tailor. They had a son. After their parents died my father's sisters and brothers moved to Orsha one after another and got married. My father's sisters were housewives after they got married, and his brother Pinia was a carpenter. My father and his sister Tania were raised in the families of Aron and Zina. Their families weren't religious. They didn't observe any traditions or bar mitzvah. In Orsha my father completed eight years of lower secondary school and started working part-time at the age of 13. He was a shepherd in the Krasnaya Niva commune. He herded cows after school and did his homework in the field.

After finishing lower secondary school my father went to work as a laborer at the bakery in Orsha. He became a Komsomol member 3. He was very active, took part in public life, was fond of progressive revolutionary ideas, and soon became the secretary of the Komsomol unit of the bakery. My father had a very serious attitude towards public activities. The Komsomol unit headed by my father received the 'Red Flag of the Central Committee of Belarus' award for being the best performing Komsomol unit in the country. My father was 18 years old at the time. In 1932 he became secretary of the Komsomol unit of Orsha. From 1932-1933 he studied at the party school. After finishing this school he got a job with the district newspaper of Orsha, Lenin's Call, a communist propaganda newspaper for the struggle against capitalist society and the construction of a new communist society. I think the title of this newspaper speaks for itself.

My mother's parents came from Orsha. My grandfather, Khonia Shyfrinson, was born in Orsha in the 1870s, and my grandmother, Masha Shyfrinson, was born in Orsha in 1881. She came from a very educated and wealthy family. When she was a child her mother, my great-grandmother, had a love affair and ran away with this man to England. My great-grandfather married a childless woman to raise my grandmother. . His second wife's name was Leya. My grandmother was the only child in the family, and her stepmother gave her all her love. My grandmother was a pretty and spoiled girl. The family had a housemaid and my grandmother didn't do any housework. She had classes with a teacher at home. She studied foreign languages, took piano lessons and liked to read. I don't think that my grandmother's family was religious. I don't know how my grandfather met my grandmother. They got married when she was a young girl.

My grandfather sold fruit. He was a wholesale dealer. He had fruit delivered from Pridnestroviye and Odessa region to sell it to locals at wholesale prices. My grandfather wasn't rich, but provided well for his family. They had a big two-storied stone house, with a high porch and columns, in the main street in Orsha. They rented out the first floor, and lived on the second floor. My grandfather and grandmother had six daughters. My grandfather wanted a son, but they never had any boys. Their oldest daughter, Raya, was born in 1904. Then came Tzypa, born in 1906, Rosa, born in 1908, and Slava, born in 1912. My mother, Tzyva, was born in 1916, and her younger sister, Hava, in 1918.

My grandmother didn't work, but she wasn't very fond of housekeeping or bringing up her daughters either. Although she had a housemaid to help her about the house, she still found it hard to find time to raise her six daughters, and read, which was her favorite pastime. When she got married her stepmother Leya moved in with her family. Leya did all the housework and gave all her love and care to my grandmother's daughters.

They were a very caring family. My grandfather was everyone's darling. Of course, my grandmother's daughters loved my grandmother, but they were still closer to my grandfather.

My grandfather was very religious. He went to the synagogue every day. My grandmother didn't join him, not even on Saturdays. They followed the kashrut. My grandmother wasn't fond of cooking My great-grandmother did all the cooking. She cooked traditional Jewish food: chicken broth with dumplings, boiled chicken, gefilte fish and a lot of vegetables. There was a housemaid, but my great grandmother still preferred to do everything by herself. My mother told me that she taught them how to cook. My mother learned how to make all traditional food from my great- grandmother Leya.

They celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. My great-grandmother lit candles on Sabbath. My grandmother joined the rest of the family for the prayer. My mother told me that they had special dishes for Pesach that they kept in an oak cupboard in the room instead of in the attic, which was the custom among Jewish families. When my mother was little she liked to swing on the door of the cupboard. Once the cupboard fell on her and all dishes broke. My mother said this was the only time in her life when she was strictly punished. There was a big stove in the kitchen, and they did all baking for Pesach at home. There was a group of people that went from house to house at Pesach to make matzah. They had special boards, rolling pins and wheels for making little holes into the matzah. They had all their tools wrapped in clean white cloth. They even had special cloth for washing their tools after work. They rolled out dough and baked matzah. My mother knew the whole process and made matzah herself.

My mother's older sisters were raised religious. A teacher came to teach them Jewish traditions and how to read and write in Yiddish. The rest of the children were growing up after the Revolution of 1917 during the struggle against religion 4. My mother and her sisters Slava and Haya studied at a Russian secondary school. My great- grandmother taught them to write and read Yiddish. After the Revolution they spoke two languages in the family. The older daughters and their parents spoke Yiddish, and the younger daughters spoke Russian. They studied at a Russian school and it was easier for them to communicate in Russian.

Orsha was a fairly big town. Jews constituted a significant part of the population. There were two synagogues. One was a big choral synagogue in the center, the other one a smaller one in the outskirts of town. My mother told me a lot about the town. The majority of Jews were craftsmen. They were tailors and shoemakers, and bakers that made buns and bagels and sold them at the market. Some Jews owned shops. After the Revolution they could only operate in the underground but continued to work. Jews were selling kosher sausage, (chicken and veal) in their stores. Besides Jews they had Russian and Belarus customers.

After the Revolution of 1917 my grandfather began to have problems. The Soviet authorities weren't p[leased with his commercial activities. He was declared a profiteer, who was making money in dishonest manner. My grandfather didn't stop his business, but he had to do it secretly. Private business wasn't allowed, but he had to continue working to be able to feed the family.

I know that were no pogroms against Jews [pogroms in Ukraine] 5 in Orsha. The power switched from the Red Army to the White Guards or Polish Units. There were victims among civilians, but they were incidental deaths for the most part, like people that were shot by stray bullets.

My grandfather was very critical about the Revolution, but not all members of the family shared his views. His daughter Rosa sympathized with Bolshevik ideas and was one of the first young people in Orsha to join the Komsomol. She joined a group of Komsomol members that propagated joining the Komsomol in the surrounding villages. The town of Orsha was located in a swampy area. One had to walk across swamps, where the water went up to one's ankles, to reach a village. During one of those trips Rosa caught a cold that resulted in tuberculosis. When she fell ill the family was spending all their income to get her good doctors and medication. The family became poorer. My grandfather's earnings weren't enough to cover their expenses. My great-grandmother managed to save the family from starving, thanks to her cooking talents and huge efforts. Rosa died in 1925 in spite of all efforts to save her life. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Orsha. Jews from Orsha collected money for a gravestone. Rosa's death was a great shock to my great-grandmother. She fell ill with stenocardia and began to have heart problems. She died in 1926. Her death was a blow to my grandmother.

My mother's older sister Raya had left Orsha before Rosa fell ill. She entered a pedagogical school. The family had to support her. After finishing the school Raya worked at a school in Minsk. She married her colleague, a Jewish man, and they had two children. Slava went to study in Kiev. She met her future husband, a Ukrainian man, when she was a student. My grandparents were against her marriage, but she got married nonetheless. She remained in Kiev and didn't keep in touch with her Jewish relatives. Tzypa stayed in Orsha. She married a local Jewish man, and they had two children. She was a housewife. I don't know whether they had a traditional wedding or any other details.

My mother finished secondary school when she was 17 and went to study in Nizhniy Novgorod. Somehow she failed to continue her studies. She worked at a factory for some time and then moved to Moscow. She tried to enter an institute [college] in Moscow. She had a certificate confirming her work experience at the factory, but she was the daughter of a profiteer and was not admitted. My mother returned to Orsha.

She had known my father since he had moved to Orsha after his parents died. They dated for some time and then decided to get married. My mother's parents were against their marriage. They believed my father to be a poor man. Besides, he was a party activist, and my grandfather didn't like that at all. They got married in 1936 anyways. They didn't have a religious wedding. Religious weddings were considered to be vestige of the bourgeois past. My parents had a civil ceremony. My mother said that her bridal gown was made from an old dress of my great- grandmother's. After my parents had a civil wedding ceremony they went to my mother's home. My father loaded her belongings - (a pillow, a blanket and some clothing -) onto a cart. My father worked at the peat deposit in a village near Orsha, and they went to this village to start their married life. They rented a room in a house. In 1937 my sister was born. She was named after our great-grandmother Leya. Her name in Russian was Elizabeth.

The arrests that began in 1937 and lasted until the beginning of the war didn't affect our family. [The interviewee is referring to the so- called Great Terror.] 6 Many of my father's acquaintances and friends were arrested. My mother told me that people were afraid of noises in the evening, such as the (knocking on a door or the sound of an approaching car). My father believed that everything was done on behalf of the Communist Party and thought that Stalin was right. My father was one of the 'ardent communists' as they were called.

In 1938 my father was sent to the Party's advanced training course for political officers in Mogilyov. He was rarely at home at that time. My mother had a housemaid to help her about the house and with the baby. After his training my father got an assignment with the NKVD 7 Special Department in the army. He became a professional military. This happened before the war with Finland. [the Soviet-Finnish War] 8. My father went to the front. He was wounded and had his toes frost-bitten. He had to stay in hospital for a while. After he was released he got a job in Kamenets-Podolsk in Ukraine. My mother and Elizabeth followed him.

On 22nd June 1941 [when the Great Patriotic War began] 9 my father was taking a course in medical treatment at a sanatorium. My mother and my sister were in Kamenets-Podolsk. My father was taken from the sanatorium to the front. When the air raids began my mother and sister were evacuated as the family of a military. They were allowed to bring two suitcases of luggage. My sister was 4 years old and my mother was eight months pregnant. They were evacuated on trucks. These trucks were bombed on the way. People jumped off the trucks to hide. My mother got off the truck a couple of times, but that was all she could manage to do in her condition. During the air raids that followed she stayed on the truck. Her companions told her to let her daughter run with them to hide, but my mother refused saying that if they were destined to die they would share that fate.

Their initial destination was Khmelnitskiy, but it was already occupied. They stopped at some railroad station on the way to Khmelnitsky. There they were put on a train to Orenburg. In the vicinity of Poltava my mother started to go into labor and had to get off the train. She delivered her baby on the ground near the train. She told me that the baby's back was dirty with soil when she lifted it from the ground. My mother and her baby were taken to hospital, and my sister was taken to a children's home. The luggage with their clothes was left on the train. My mother stayed in hospital for a week. After she was released she went to the children's home to pick up Elizabeth. My mother went to see the commandant of Poltava. She told him that she had had a baby and the commandant took her to a storage facility. He allowed her to take all she needed. This was storage of luggage from people who had been on trains that had been bombed. The commandant helped my mother and the kids to get on the train. My mother named the baby boy Jacob, after my father's father, Yankel. My mother didn't have milk to feed the baby. She told me that she used to wrap a piece of brown bread in gauze, dipped it into water and gave it to Jacob as a pacifier.

When they reached Orenburg my mother met my father's sister Zina at the railway station. Zina had left Orsha at the beginning of the war. Zina told my mother that she, Tania, my father's younger sister, and Fania's daughter Ania had managed to leave Orsha. My father's brother Aron and his family had moved to Podmoscoviye in the early 1930s. My father's other sisters and brother perished in the first days of the war when Orsha was occupied by the fascists.

Zina was heading for Kuibyshev, and my mother and the kids joined her. When they reached Kuibyshev my mother wrote to the evacuation inquiry office in Buguruslan. She found out that my grandparents, Tzypa and her two children, and Haya were in Korkino village, Cheliabinsk region. My mother moved to this village to be with them and went to work. Tzypa's husband was killed at the front. The authorities gave her a cow as aid to the family of a deceased military. Tzypa and my mother got a plot of land where they were growing potatoes. My grandparents had a goat. My mother was a laborer at a canteen and later became an accountant there. She could have her meals in this canteen and so could my sister. When my mother was at work my grandparents looked after the children. They lived in Korkino until 1947.

My father was a political officer and an NKVD employee. He was appointed a SMERSH [acronym for 'Death to Spies', internal security service) division]. But my father wasn't just a clerk sitting in the office. He spent a lot of time at the frontline where he was severely wounded in 1942. He had multiple wounds on his chest, abdomen, arms and legs. He was lying on the ground for over six hours. There was a German sniper on a tree. A star on my father's cap reflected sunrays and the sniper kept shooting until it got dark. Only then my father's comrades got a chance to get him out of there. He was taken to a hospital behind the lines in Baku where he had surgery. It was a miracle that he survived. He had his ribs removed on one side and there were big scars on his chest. He lost a lot of blood. He was in constant pain. There were no analgesics available, and his doctor gave instruction to nurses to give him alcohol anytime he would wake up. Later my father never drank alcohol. He used to say that he had had too much alcohol.

My father stayed in hospital from December 1942 till February 1944. Then he was sent to the Caucasus to complete his treatment. He didn't have any information about his family. He didn't even know about the baby. It took him two years to find his family. He got information in 1944 saying that they were in the Ural. The same year he returned to his military unit at the front. In 1945 my father got an assignment in Japan and then in China. [This was during the war wit Japan.] 10 In 1947 my father was sent to fight the enemies of the Soviet regime in Chernovtsy, Western Ukraine. They were Ukrainian patriots.

Zina and her family stayed in Kuibyshev after the war. Her husband returned from the front. Zina died in Kuibyshev in the 1970s. Her son lives in Israel. Aron and his family lived in Podmoscoviye. His only son Jacob, named after my grandfather, was killed at the front. One of his daughters died of tuberculosis after the war. Two daughters moved to Israel and one lives in Moscow. Aron died in the 1970s. My father's younger sister, Tania, and her husband lived in Zaporozhiye after the war. She married a Russian man and didn't keep in touch with her Jewish relatives. Tania died in 1983.

My mother's parents, Tzypa and her children, and Haya stayed in Korkino. They were the only Jewish family there. They built a house. My grandmother Masha died there in 1959. She had been ill and confined to bed for quite a while before she died. My grandfather died a few years later, in the 1960s. Tzypa didn't remarry. She was an accountant and was raising two sons. Haya lived with us in Chernovtsy for some time. Later, when my grandmother's stenocardia got worse, Haya went to Korkino to look after her. She was an accountant too. She was single and lived with my grandparents and later with Tzypa's son looking after his children. Haya died in 2001, Tzypa in 1984. Raya and her husband moved to Israel in the early 1970s. She died there in 1989.

In the 1950s there were gangs of Ukrainian patriots in the woods of Bukovina fighting against the Soviet regime. This was a mission of the KGB. Ukrainian patriots had their informers in villages. Sometimes KGB units came to a place just a few minutes after a gang had left. KGB was trying to find out who informed the gangs about their plans. It turned out to be one of my father's secretaries, a young girl.

In 1948 my father received a two-storied mansion and a plot of land in a quiet street close to the center of Chernovtsy. It was a cultured European town. There was a university and theaters. Chernovtsy belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy until 1918. In November 1918 Bukovina became part of Romania. Chernovtsy used to be a Jewish town. When the Romanians came to power some Jews left Chernovtsy. But even then the Jewish population still constituted over 60% of the town. There were about 65,000 Jews out of 105,000 people living in Chernovtsy. Yiddish was spoken in the streets as well as German and Romanian.

My mother and the children moved to Chernovtsy. Ania, my cousin, the daughter of Aunt Fania who perished in Orsha, moved in with them. Ania entered Medical College. My sister and brother went to school. My father grew vegetables and had chickens. Their situation was hard at the time. My mother didn't work and was raising three children. My father ordered my mother to let nobody in when he wasn't at home. People used to bring baskets with food and left them near the door trying to bribe my father. My father took them to the street when he came home. Sometimes aggressive relatives of Ukrainian bandits came to the house threatening to kill the family. It was a horrible time. After all gangs were eliminated my father was transferred to the Chernovtsy regional KGB department.

I was born in November 1949. There were only two ambulance vehicles in town at the time. I was born while the ambulance was on its way to our house. Ania, who was a medical student, was my mother's midwife and cut the umbilical cord. I was named Faina after Fania, my father's sister. I went to kindergarten at 3, and my mother went to work as an accountant. She had learned this profession in evacuation during the war.

My father worked at the KGB office until 1952, when the campaign against cosmopolitans 11 began. Many Jews, including my father, were fired. Of course, he knew why he had been dismissed, and this caused him a lot of suffering. Nevertheless, he remained a devoted communist. He mourned for Stalin in 1953 and didn't believe a word about the denunciation of his cult. We weren't allowed to say a disapproving word about the Soviet regime, or, God forbid, tell a political anecdote. For my father everything about the Party was sacred and certainly not subject to discussion or criticism. He explained that what happened to him was a mere mistake and that it was impossible to avoid such mistakes. My father couldn't get a job for a long time. This was the period of blatant anti-Semitism. The situation was very hard for our family. My mother used to sell our belongings to get food for the family. In the end my father got a job at the human resource department of the woodwork factory. Later he got another job at the Electronmach plant.

In 1954 my mother took me to my grandparents in Korkino. This was the only time I saw them. My grandfather looked like Santa Claus. It was a bitter winter, and he was wearing a heavy white winter-coat. He had a beautiful white beard. He was very handsome, even in his old age. I can't remember my grandmother that well. She had severe stenocardia. She was a fat woman and stayed in bed breathing heavily most of the time. My grandfather did all the housework. He went to buy bread in the mornings while I was still in bed. He always brought me a bagel or candy and put them under my pillow.

We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 7 November [October Revolution Day] 12, 1st May and Victory Day. My mother cooked fancy food in advance. After the parade we had many guests at home. They were partying and having fun. We also celebrated birthdays and New Year's Eve. We didn't celebrate Jewish holidays in the family. Only in the late 1960s, after my father retired, did we begin to buy matzah and celebrate Pesach.

My parents spoke Yiddish only when they wanted to keep the subject of discussion from us. We didn't learn Yiddish at home. I had a friend whose family spoke Yiddish. I often visited her and learned to understand and speak Yiddish. My sister has a better conduct of Yiddish than I. She also had a friend whose family spoke Yiddish. My brother didn't know Yiddish until recently.

I started school in 1956. I faced direct anti-Semitism from my very first days at school. It was demonstrated by my teacher. She didn't dare to speak openly, but she was very unkind to Jewish pupils. She gave them lower grades and never found any excuse for our minor misconduct. It continued in senior classes. Our tutor, a Jew, continuously reminded us to have teachers put our grades in our record- book, because if we didn't, we might find lower grades in our class registers some time later, and we needed to have our record-book as proof. There were a few teachers that demonstrated anti-Semitism, but there were also Jewish teachers. Of course, Jewish children were the best students. By the time of graduation there were only Jewish children who would get medals for their success. The school management couldn't stand this situation and teachers began to give Jewish children lower grades intentionally. Other children got higher grades than they deserved.

I was a Young Octobrist 13, a pioneer and a Komsomol member at school. I was an active member of all these organizations. I was chief of our pioneer unit, secretary of the Komsomol unit and a member of the school Komsomol bureau. I was also editor of the school wall newspaper. I idolized my father and his view influenced my attitude, I believe. I was fond of mathematics and physics at school. I was fond of mathematic and physics at school. After school my sister entered the Construction Faculty of the Railroad College. Upon graduation she went to work. My brother Jacob entered the Radio-Engineering Faculty at the Radio-Engineering College in Leningrad. Upon graduation he got a job assignment in Nizhniy Novgorod for three years, the (standard term for post-graduate job assignments). When this term was over he returned to Chernovtsy. He got a job at the Electronmach plant where my father was working at the time. Jacob still works there today.

I finished school with a silver medal. Entering university in Chernovtsy was out of the question. None of the Jews stayed in Chernovtsy if they wished to continue their studies. Most of them were going to Russia where anti-Semitism wasn't so strong. I went to Leningrad where our distant relatives lived. I had to pass an interview to be admitted to a higher educational institution. I entered the Faculty of Automated Telecommunications at the Leningrad Polytechnic Communications Institute. There were many Jewish students at our Institute. Most of them came from Ukraine. We didn't have any problems in the course of our studies at this Institute.

Upon graduation I got a job with the telephone agency in Leningrad. This agency was housed in a building in Gertzen Street 14, near the Winter Palace that the revolutionaries were supposed to occupy on Lenin's orders during the Revolution of 1917. At work I constantly faced blatant anti-Semitism. People told me to my face that Jews were a people of traitors and hucksters. I visited Leningrad recently and thought about dropping by my former workplace, but I changed my mind. I recalled the past and realized that such a visit was probably not going to be fun.

When Jews started to move to Israel in the 1970s neither my family nor I had any thoughts about moving to another country. I mean, there were talks about it, but my father nipped them in the bud. He believed people that were leaving to be traitors, and said that nobody should leave this country and that everything here was good and correct. He argued that education was free, and so were medical services, that everything was just fine and if people left it would be a big mistake.

One of my school friends was among the first to leave. There was a special Komsomol meeting at school where she was condemned of treachery. I believed that everybody had the right to make his own decision. If children were leaving their family behind, their parents had to give consent to their emigration in writing. I know that my father would have never given his consent to my departure. I sympathized with these people and envied them a little. They could make a choice in life, I couldn't.

I got married in 1975. I don't feel like talking about my former husband. He was a wicked man, and I don't even want to say his name. He wasn't a Jew, but nationality didn't matter to me. My father raised us as internationalists. In the same year I got married, my daughter Nina was born.

We rented various apartments. When I got a residential stamp in my passport I got enrolled on the list of people wishing to buy apartments. But then I began to feel unwell and my doctor recommended to move to another climatic zone. We got the opportunity to move to the ancient town of Kaluga in Central Russia. I felt better, but I had problems getting a job. As soon as supervisors saw that I was Jewish they rushed to tell me that there was no vacancy available. We took our daughter to my parents' place in Chernovtsy. She went to school there. We didn't know where we were going to live and believed she would be better off with her grandmother rather than share our problems. My father retired in the late 1970s. In 1980 I divorced my husband for quite a few reasons, but I don't feel like talking about it. In 1984, after my father died, I moved to Chernovtsy and lived in my parents' house. I got a job at the Electronmach plant where my father had worked and my brother was working. My mother was a pensioner helping me to raise my daughter. She grew vegetables and did the housework. She died in 1992.

My daughter studied at a Ukrainian secondary school close to our house in Chernovtsy. When Nina was in the 8th grade, this school became a mathematical lyceum. Nina did very well at school and spent all her time studying. She didn't care about public activities. She felt ironic about them. In her senior classes she took part in many mathematical contests and received many awards and diplomas, including international awards. After school Nina entered the Faculty of Applied mathematicMathematics at the University in Chernovtsy. She didn't have to pass entrance exams; she was admitted on the results of her interview. Nina is a teacher of mathematicmathematics at the Polytechnic College now.

When it was time for Nina to obtain her passport she stated firmly that she wanted to have her Jewish nationality written in it. I didn't talk her out of it, although I understood how complicated her life was going to be. I'm so happy that this kind of thing belongs to the past now.

Nina studied at school with her future husband. He is Ukrainian and his name is Gennadiy Goncharuk. He entered Medical Academy after school. When they announced that they wanted to get married I didn't care about his nationality. I saw that they were in love and hoped that they would have a happy life together. They have been together for eight years. Gennadiy is a doctor at the district hospital. They have a daughter, Natasha, who was born in 1995. We live in my parents' mansion. My sister and I live on the first floor, and Nina and her family live on the second floor. Nina and her husband are thinking of moving to Israel. Of course, if they decide to go there, my sister and I will follow them. I believe that we might have a better life in Israel. I hope that my children will decide to move there, although I would be a bit afraid to go to another country now. I've lived my life here and the graves of my dear ones are in this land.

In the past decade Jewish life in Ukraine changed dramatically. We began to identify ourselves as Jews. People of other nationalities respect our feelings. I can't imagine anybody calling me 'zhydovka' [kike], an expression I often heard when I was a child and a young girl. Many of our Jewish neighbors moved to other countries. We have more Ukrainian and Russian neighbors. We get along with them well. I believe the fact that they use the word 'Jew' without feeling embarrassed about it indicates a positive change. People tried to avoid saying this word in the past.

My Ukrainian neighbor was appointed director of the Jewish school. Her grandson goes to this school and studies Jewish religion and traditions. His favorite subject is Hebrew. When he comes to see us and finds that I do something wrong, that is, non-compliant with Jewish traditions, like cooking meat with cheese he points out to me, 'We, Jews, do it in a different way'.

In recent years I've never heard anything bad being said about our family, or Jews in general. I believe that the situation is stable, although who knows? If there were a pogrom I don't know who of our neighbors would come first to rob us, if not kill us. There are such people, although they belong to an older generation. Young people aren't anti-Semitic. We read Jewish newspapers regularly. My granddaughter goes to the dancing and art club of Hesed. I attend lectures on the history of Jewish people and religion. Regretfully, I don't have time to attend all Hesed events.

I've never been interested in politics and never belonged to any party or movement. All I wanted was to have a peaceful and quiet life. We don't go to the synagogue, don't know any prayers and thus don't pray. I believe it's characteristic for most Jews that grew up during the Soviet regime. But we celebrate Jewish holidays at home. We observe traditions and cook traditional food. I make hamantashen at Purim. We cook traditional food at Pesach and make many things from matzah. Unfortunately, there isn't much that we can afford, but we make the best of what we have. Of course, it would be good to have a table laid in accordance with all Jewish traditions, but we think it more important to feed our souls.

Glossary

Rudi Katz
Brasov
Romania
Interviewer: Andreea Laptes
Date of interview: January 2003

Mr. Katz is a 74-year-old man who lives in a two-room apartment. His living room is literally piled up with books; there isn't enough room for them on the shelves: books on anatomy, science, languages, history, psychology, Judaism. He's especially proud of an old German-Yiddish dictionary. There is a rather old computer on his desk: he learned to use it and even fix it himself. He has an incredibly sharp mind, and he is very active. Despite his age, he still studies every day, has friends and is very involved in the community life. He's one of the few who know Hebrew well enough to teach others, and young Jews often come to him for help in their Hebrew studies. His politeness borders timidity sometimes, and you can tell he is a very sensitive person.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

Family background

My paternal grandfather, Nusen Katz, lived in Carlibaba at the time I knew him, but he originally came from Ukraine. This grandfather had a rather interesting story: when he was only three or four years old, he was taken across the border to Romania and abandoned there, because of some ongoing pogroms in Ukraine. He was adopted by a man named Katz, but although he bore his name, he wasn't really a Katz. I don't know a lot of things about my paternal grandfather, because he lived rather far from Cernauti. I only saw him once, but I remember he wore his beard trimmed. He worked as a clerk in a timber station. I don't know exactly what kind of schooling he had, but he must have had something at least equivalent to high school today. He knew mathematics and did a lot of complicated calculations, like timber cubing. If one wanted to buy a forest, he would have to make an investigation and find out the amount of timber he could obtain from the trees. My grandfather knew how to calculate that. He wasn't very religious, but he was still in touch with the Jewish way of life. Judging from what I have heard of him, he was more of an intellectual, and more open to novelty. This is perhaps because he had an industrial activity and he had to keep up with technology and the changes in society. As I learned much later, he was highly respected by people in the Jewish community and Christians alike.

About my paternal grandmother, Rosa Katz, I don't know a lot of things; I remember she was a quiet person, and that she always wore a kerchief on her head. My father talked about his father more than he did about his mother, and especially about what was going on in the village. I remember a story, that my grandfather's cart was followed by a pack of wolves during one hard winter. My father said that a tragedy could have happened if the horses hadn't been fast enough. My grandfather died in the 1930s and my grandmother died some time before him.

My grandparents lived in a house in Carlibaba, a bit off the main road; it was a nice house, with three or four rooms and a big porch. I went to see this house, some time in the 1960s, and I was glad to see there were people who still remembered my grandfather... I understood my grandfather got along very well with the people around him; he would even help them with calculations. There were some people, in their fifties, who spoke perfect Yiddish to me; they were Christians, but they learned it from Jewish friends when they were young. You could tell from that that Jews and Christians got along well. I also tried to find my grandparents' graves, but I couldn't read the inscriptions on the tombstones, they were too old.

My father had two brothers: one who died in World War I, Iosef I think, and Lazar; he was a tailor, but I don't know anything else about him or his family. My father also had three sisters: Clara, Loti and Golda. Golda died when she was young. Clara was a seamstress and Loti worked in a factory. They made aliyah, but I don't know whether they were married or not. My father cared a lot about his family: his brother who died in the war and his sisters.

My maternal grandfather was called Zise Popper, and he lived in Paraul Negru, not far from Cernauti. I used to visit my grandparents when I was seven or eight years old, during the summer holidays, and I used to stay a few weeks. A lot of times I went there alone, my father put me on the bus; the bus didn't go all the way to Paraul Negru, so a neighbor or a friend of my grandfather's waited for me with a cart and took me to their house. My grandfather had a small grocery store there, but before that he had an inn and a bigger house. I know they used to have cattle, cows at least, because my mother told me that she used to cry whenever she heard them bellowing on the way to the slaughterhouse. My grandfather was a very strong man, well built: he could lift two kegs that weighed 20 - 25 kilograms and put them on the counter.

Grandfather was a religious man, he didn't shave, and he wore payes and put on his tefillin three times a day. He was a sober person, strong-willed and not very talkative. All his life he was as strong as a bull, he ate well, drank a draught or two, and only in his late years he had problems walking. He had a bitter end because of this. He was with us when we were deported, in 1941. He was left behind at Marculesti 1, because he couldn't walk, and he died there. Nobody who got left behind survived.

My grandmother Baba Popper was a tiny, lively woman, and everybody was very fond of her, my grandfather most of all; she probably had very little schooling, but she had a native intelligence, and she ran the entire household. She made all the arrangements, and even my grandfather listened to her. People would always gather around her and talk for hours on end. She was the heart of the house, and religious, too: she read a translated version of the Siddur in Yiddish. She wore a kerchief on her head, not a wig, and kept a kosher household and always observed Sabbath. They lived in a small house, with two rooms and a kitchen. The grocery store was in one room, and they lived in the other. Across the street they had a lumber- room, where I slept sometimes, on the floor, covered only in blankets and sheep skin. I still remember the smell of the apples they kept there! They had no electricity or running water.

My grandmother didn't know Hebrew, but my grandfather could read the prayers in Hebrew. They spoke Yiddish in the house, and also Romanian and Ukrainian, because most of the village people were Ukrainians. They didn't raise animals, but I'm sure they grew vegetables because my mother was very good at gardening. My grandparents had a box in the house, with a menorah on it and a lock, where they gathered money for the Zionists in Israel, for Keren Kayemet 2. They were very good friends with their Christian neighbors, they visited each other, helped each other with money; they had good relationships with the people around them. They only left the village during the high holidays, because there was no synagogue there, and so they would travel to one or gather with other Jews to form a minyan.

My mother had two brothers: one was Osias, who got married and didn't leave the countryside. I don't remember his wife's name, or the village he lived in. He had no children. He was a well-built man, like my grandfather, and had a grocery store, just like my grandfather. We visited him very seldom, because he lived far from Cernauti. The other brother, Iosef, lived in Cernauti, where he was a clerk. He and his wife, Frida, had a boy, Armin. Armin died in an accident in Israel. My mother also had a sister, who died young. I don't remember her name.

My father [Sapse Katz] was born in Carlibaba in the 1890s, but he lived with my mother in Ceranuti. I don't know why or when he moved to Cernauti. He learnt tailoring in Carlibaba when he was young, like his brother Lazar, but he worked in the forestry industry like his father. He never told me, but I think his father wanted his sons to have some qualifications before learning more. In Cernauti he was a clerk in a timber station; he had a small notebook with him, where he had written a lot of mathematical formulae, which he used in his office, calculating timber cubing, for example.

He wasn't an exuberant person, but he got along well with the people around him. He knew German, Romanian and Yiddish, and had his father's inclination towards calculations. He taught me how to calculate, when I was only five years old. He was proud of me and showed all his friends what his son could do. He took good care of me; he took me swimming and sleighing. I remember he made my first pair of skis; he got some wood, boiled it and then forced them to curve. But he wasn't very affectionate and he didn't talk to me about my problems.

My mother, Clara Popper, was born in Paraul Negru, in the 1890s. She had only completed elementary school, but she loved to read. I don't know a lot about her life when she was young, but I think she was very close to her mother - she was like her in many ways. She was the heart of the house and my father listened to her. She was more intellectual, read a lot. She knew some things about Romanian history, and about a lot of Romanian writers and poets. She was appreciated by our neighbors very much.

I believe they got married in the 1920s through a shadkhan; my mother lived in a village and my father lived in a town by that time, so they couldn't have met at a dance, like it was the case in other families. I remember my mother had a ketubbah, written in Hebrew from the rabbi who married them in the synagogue in Cernauti. She was a housewife, she took care of the house; sometimes she even baked bread when we had to save money.

Growing up

We lived in a small house that was built with the help of an uncle, after the plans my father drew. It had two apartments: one was always rented and one was ours. It had one room, a kitchen and a big porch; we also had a small garden, where my mother planted vegetables - I still remember the taste of the tomatoes! We had simple furniture, just the necessary things, a bed, a kitchen table where we ate and chairs around it. We had no electricity or running water, the water closet was in the garden, and we had to bring water from the well, which was in the garden. Bringing water was usually my job, if I was around. If not, my mother did it. Later we had electricity, but no running water. My mother lit a fire in the kitchen, and during winter, she heated bricks on the stove, wrapped them in cloth and then put them in the bed. She only made a fire in the room if we had guests. She did all the household chores; only occasionally a woman came to help her with the laundry.

Sometimes I went with my mother to the market - there was a small market nearby. Early in the morning, peasants came and put their goods on carpets on the ground, there were no stands like today: they brought eggs, hens, cheese. A woman came with her cart and brought us milk every day. We had no animals, but I had two pets, a cat and a dog; my father wasn't very fond of them and one day he took the dog away; I was very sad.

My parents didn't dress traditionally; they wore ready-made clothes just like everybody else. My father went to work in an office, so he dressed accordingly: in trousers and a jacket. My father wasn't very religious, he didn't keep Sabbath because he had to work on Saturdays, and he didn't pray every day; but when he could, on the high holidays, he went to the synagogue, maybe even every four weeks; he loved to socialize and chat. My mother was more religious than him, she tried to respect Sabbath: she would ask a Ukrainian neighbor to come and light the fire, and she avoided hard work. Every Friday evening she cleaned the house, baked challah, lit the candles and said the prayers. Evenings like those were like a light among all my childhood memories. She always went to the shochet to have the chickens slaughtered.

My favorite holidays were Pesach, Yom Kippur and Friday evenings [Sabbath]. On the first day of Pesach my mother would clean the house, and take out special cutlery. [Actually, the cleaning at Pesach has to be finished the day before.] I also remember the chazzan, dressed in white after being in the mikveh, and blowing the shofar on Yom Kippur. That image still lights up my memory. There was a song about the martyrdom of Jews; women cried when they sang that. I didn't have a bar mitzvah, because I was on the road when I should have had it. Later, in 1949, I was sick, then busy making a living; and under the communist regime I couldn't go to the synagogue.

My parents weren't politically involved; I remember my father came home once with the book 'Capitalul' [Karl Marx's 'The Capital,' forbidden by the Iron Guard 3] - a friend from work asked him to hide it for him for a while. My mother burned it immediately. They got along well with their neighbors, Jewish or not, and they visited each other. But they had close relationships with my mother's brother, Iosef, who called on us on Saturdays. We also visited him and his wife, Frida.

Cernauti was a modern town, which inherited a lot from the Austro-Hungarian culture. It had beautiful buildings, paved roads, and friendly people. Education was compulsory, the commerce was booming. We lived on the outskirts, a bit far from the center. We had Jewish, German, and Ukrainian neighbors. The Jewish community was big, and well structured: over 30 to 40 percent of the town's population. Most of the Jews were well situated, except maybe those who lived in the crowded Jewish neighborhood. We had a relative there we visited from time to time, but I don't remember what kind of relative he was.

Cernauti had a rich religious life, there were five or six synagogues in the town, and also a beautiful temple, which was later set on fire. We went to the one closest to us. It was a small synagogue, with simple people: they weren't intellectuals, doctors, or professors. For these simple people the notion of reformism didn't have much meaning; they were neither Orthodox 4 nor reformed. There was only a shammash, but no rabbi there. I don't know about other synagogues, but the Jews at the big temple were different, they were intellectuals, so they were reformed. But in those years this separation into different streams of religion wasn't that visible.

The Jews in Cernauti had a lot of cultural organizations, where they sang Jewish songs or recited poems; they made trips around Cernauti, but I was too young to join them. And almost every Jewish house raised money for Keren Kayemet. Very popular among Jews were the Jewish theaters, which preserved a certain way of thinking and feeling: I still remember an actress, Sidi Tal, who was very famous then.

There weren't typical occupations for Jews. A Jew could be anything, from a butcher to a lawyer, especially since there were no Anti-Jewish laws 5 then [in the 1930s]. Jews could go to school, college, own houses or stores. Near our street there was an oxygen factory and the owner was a Jew. But making a living was hard for a lot of people; I remember the chazzan in the synagogue where we went was a tinsmith, but at the same time he was also a chacham, a shammash, and from time to time he was called up to the Torah to read from it as well, during the service.

My mother looked after me when I was small, with no help. Then I went to kindergarten, and then I went to the normal state school in Cernauti from 1934 to 1939. I especially liked mathematics and physics. I had good teachers, who made sure that at least a few students understood what they taught: they asked questions, and were more involved in the teaching process than I think they are nowadays. I don't remember one of them in particular. I got along well with all my classmates, it didn't matter that I was a Jew. I made friends easily, and we often went hiking or swimming - there was a lake nearby. I also played a bit of football, near our house there was a football field; it was the town's football field, called Maccabi 6. We had a really good football team. Sports, in general, were very popular among the Jewish organizations.

My father didn't study religion with me, but he sent me to cheder two or three times a week, from the age of six until I was around ten years old. He didn't want to send me to do further studies in a yeshivah, but it was tradition, and I think my mother wanted me to have some basic knowledge about Judaism. We studied with bocherim from Maramures, who knew Hebrew, in a room in the synagogue we usually went to. It wasn't really a classroom, with a blackboard, and we didn't use notebooks. We just had to have a Hummash or Siddur, the teacher read first and then we had to read after him. He would go around and hear us read, and if we made mistakes, he would slap us.

We studied with both bocherim and melamedim. I studied with a melamed, Margulis. He had a cheder in his home, but he also came to our home to teach me; we did translations from the Hummash, and reading exercises, and learned the right punctuation. I remember he had a lot of books, but he didn't speak Hebrew as well as the young bocherim, who studied in a yeshivah. I remember I had a friend whose melamed was teaching him Hebrew, and it was a sensation, because Jewish kids usually learnt that in yeshivah, not in cheder. I wasn't very hardworking, during the class I never read the entire paragraph I was supposed to, because I used to go drink water three times, then ask permission to go to the toilet three times. When I took it up again, after I retired, I barely knew the letters! But it eventually came back to me.

We had a library in the house; my mother read good novels in German, and my father was fond of history books. We also had religious books, like the Mazor. I loved reading, and my father was sometimes annoyed because I read too much or I read things I wasn't supposed to read. He once burnt some of my books - I liked to read books from a series called 'Famous Women': it was about famous women throughout history, like Anne Boleyn, the mistress [second wife] of King Henry VIII of England, and that kind of reading was prohibited - and so my father smacked me. He got very upset when a neighbor gave me a Magazine of Science and Travel because he thought it distracted me from studying. [This is a magazine with scientific articles and feature articles on different countries.] He never thought that kind of reading was useful for a child's evolution. He believed I should read only books for school, and that I should be obedient and polite. My mother usually took my side when it came to reading. I didn't go to a library, because there wasn't one nearby, but my father had a friend, a high school teacher, to whom he advised me to go. I borrowed from him Romanian literature, like Creanga or Sadoveanu [Ion Creanga (1837-1889) and Mihail Sadoveanu (1880- 1961), famous Romanian writers]. But back then I was crazy about Karl May, adventure books, the Magazine of Science and Travel. [May, Karl (1842- 1912): real name Carl Friedrich May, German author, best known for his wild west books set in the American West and similar stories set in the Orient and Middle East.]

I had a lot of friends. I liked Feder, an acquaintance of my father; he was a carpenter and I loved spending time with him in his workshop, where it always smelled like wood. I liked his family and kids, too, they were a happy family. A Christian family rented the other apartment, and I made friends with their daughter, Viorica. We were the same age, eight or nine years old. There was another boy who lived in the neighborhood, Nathan Kurz; we were friends. Across the street was another Jewish family, Dachner, who had girls. One of them, Sulamita, was my age and we got along really well; everybody called her Slima. I had Christian friends as well, two German boys: Rudi, who left for Germany in 1940, and Fiebich. I remember Fiebich drew beautifully. During the holidays I stayed at home with my parents, I never went to a youth camp or something like that; sometimes I went to my grandfather in Paraul Negru.

During the War

Until I was deported with my family to the Tibulovca 7 concentration camp in Transnistria 8 in 1941, I wasn't directly confronted with anti- Semitism, but I had heard of it. Newspapers talked about the events in Germany, and there was news of the Iron Guard movement at the universities, where Jews were beaten and thrown out. I made friends with a boy who had come from Austria right after the Anschluss 9, in 1938; he probably had relatives here. There was some tension in our house; I think my parents became aware of the fact that the danger could come our way.

The strongest impressions I have about the ongoing political events are from one night, after the war with Poland, when the Polish refugees came. [Rudi refers to the beginning of World War II when Germany occupied Poland without a declaration of war 10.] There was a big noise one night, and everybody came out of their houses into the main street, to see what it was. It was a huge stream of people, of all ages, with cars, carts, or on foot. There were Jews among them. The Dachners, our neighbors, took in some refugees. I remember one of them married one of their daughters later.

My first real confrontation with anti-Semitism was when I was deported. But we were affected by the anti-Jewish laws, even before we were deported; my father was forbidden to work and I couldn't go to school anymore. He had to take up tailoring again, so that he could support the family.

The deportation was an intense shock; we had no time to get used to what was going on. My grandfather died on the way, in Marculesti, because he couldn't walk. My uncle Iosef's wife, Frida, and her mother died in Tibulovca. My mother died soon after we got there, in two or three months. They all died because of typhoid fever.

Tibulovca was a village, like all concentration camps in Transnistria. It was a relatively small and isolated place. We were taken just outside the village, into a huge building that used to be a collective farm. The first winter there was terrible: no one could go into the village, because it was guarded. But there was no barbed wire like in the German concentration camps had, and there was no camp administration. Hunger and typhoid fever were everywhere. 1,700 Jews were taken to Tibulovca, and after the first winter only 200 had survived. There were no executions in Tibulovca; if it happened, they were only isolated cases.

We only got in touch with my father's sisters from Bucharest once, in 1943, when we had permission to write; they sent us some things, but nothing much, they were rather poor. I could have come home sooner, in 1943, because there was an order that children could go, but I got to Obodovca 11 late, and missed the train I should have taken and so I had to go back to Tibulovca and wait. Obodovca, a little town, was 15 to 20 kilometers away from Tibulovca; there was no forced labor there, but no one looked after you there. I came home in 1944, with my father. My father was now rather sick; in 1943, he was taken away to Buck [Bug], to build a bridge, and he came back sick.

When we came back, my father had to work as a tailor, because he wasn't allowed to be a clerk. But we were able to come back to the same house; I don't remember the exact details, but I think it was common property with some relatives. The house was empty, of course, none of the things we had were there, but it was good that we had at least a place to stay. There had been a lot of requisitions, and a lot of houses were devastated and robbed when the deportation took place. But as far as I could tell, the attitude of our neighbors and friends toward us didn't change.

After the War

When I returned, in 1944, I had no political beliefs. I had been cut off from the world for too long. For almost two years my father and I stayed in Cernauti under the Russian government. The Jews in Cernauti struggled with the authorities and eventually were given permission to join a program to go back to Israel; this meant coming to Romania, so this is how we came to Brasov, in 1946. I don't know if it was my father's choice to come here, we could have been sent here by the program. But as soon as we came, my father got sick with cancer, and he was in the hospital for more than a year, and so we couldn't go to Israel. He died in Bucharest in 1947, four weeks after he got there to visit his sisters. Neither my father nor I worked at the time, so my aunts helped us with some money.

From 1946 until 1950, about four years, I was active in a Zionist organization, the Hashomer Hatzair 12. I prepared Jews for aliyah, and a lot of people I knew then left. I had two good friends when I came back from deportation, Zuckermann and Becker. Becker left for Israel and became an actor. I don't know what happened to Zuckermann. I also had another good friend here, in Brasov, whose name was also Katz, Misi Katz! But we weren't related in any way, he came from Maramures and had been deported to Auschwitz. He was alone, just like I was. He also left for Israel, and we kept in touch for a while. I wanted to go to Israel, too, but the Zionists were always asking me to stay a bit more, because they needed me. So I ended up in Satu-Mare, and that's where I got sick with my lungs, in 1949. I was admitted to the hospital in Satu-Mare for a year, and I was also in a sanatorium in Savadisla near Cluj.

When I came back to Cernauti, I studied for two years in an apprentice school under the Russian government. When we moved to Brasov, I worked as a technician at the Consumers' Co-operatives Union for a year and a half, and then at Uzina 2, a factory with military profile. While working, I finished the apprentice school here, in Brasov, in 1954, because I was allowed to take exams from two previous years in one year. In 1955 I went to the Polytechnic University in Bucharest. I did one year in Bucharest and the rest through distance learning while I worked in Brasov. I took all my exams in 1960. During this period life was hard for me; I had some acquaintances, but I had no social life. I was either working or studying for college, so until 1960 I didn't have one day off, not even Saturdays or Sundays. In the factory there was a lack of personnel; so first I worked in the tool-making department, then I was in charge of planning. I never had a day off.

I didn't have problems at work because I was a Jew; everybody was used to talking in riddles, apparently trifling about serious subjects; nobody was willing to risk being heard speaking clearly against the system or about religion, and suffer the consequences. I used to talk to my friends like this, for example: 'You know, the Bible is just a fairytale, it's silly to believe in it...but you know, there's something interesting in it...' and so on. It never happened to me, but I have seen Christian colleagues being reproved for going to church or having the priest over because their mother was sick. I was careful.

Before 1960 I didn't have a place to live, a house of my own; I lived in rented apartments, the salary wasn't enough; I didn't have anything that belonged to me, except my clothes, not even a spoon. It was hard to get a place to live. After 1960, I got an apartment I had to share, but at least I had a place and a bigger salary. It isn't the place I live in now; I have been living here since 1980; this is a castle compared to what I had back then!

I think this was also one of the reasons I never got married; I never actually had the time to meet somebody, or the means to start up a family for a long time. For people like me, who had been alienated from their homes and families in the troubled 1940s, it took a tremendous effort to fit into the normal life once again, and try to gain what you lost or what was taken away from you.

I kept in touch with close relatives, but sporadically; my aunts, my father's sisters left for Israel, as well as my mother's two brothers. The son of Iosef, Armin, my cousin, and I were also in touch for a while, we wrote letters, but after a while I stopped writing; it was dangerous to have contacts with family from abroad. [The Securitate 13 monitored all relationship Romanian citizens had with their friends and relatives abroad; Rudi could have been taken in for questioning and could have even lost his job.]

During the communist regime, life was hard, with all the restrictions, but I had gotten used to it. In 1980 I moved to the apartment I live in now; I didn't socialize much, I had to work a lot. I never agreed with the regime, so I was never politically involved. I tried to observe Sabbath whenever I could, but a lot of times I had to work on Saturdays.

I have never been to Israel. I wasn't directly affected by the wars against Israel in 1967 14 and 1973 15, but they affected me because the existence of the state of Israel is vital for every Jew. You could feel some danger in those dramatic moments, but you also felt that the whole world was there for Israel; back then, it was an impulsive movement against Israel, and Israel had a much larger effective support than it does now. I believe it's more dangerous now, when there's a stronger coalition of forces against Israel.

Life changed for me after 1989 16; one can take part in religious Jewish life more freely than it was possible before. I believe religion is essential for every man. Before 1989, I couldn't go to the synagogue, just like many other Jews. Now there are conditions for a proper development of Jewish life, although there's a certain anti-Semitic movement that couldn't be seen before. But this is life; one cannot have things in a pure state.

I retired in 1990, and I started to study religion and Hebrew, all by myself. At the same time I offer some technical advice to some companies. Although I didn't go to the synagogue [during the communist regime], I had bought books, dictionaries from secondhand booksellers from across the country even before 1989 - I had to travel a lot with my work, so I already had the material to start up. Today I'm very involved in the Jewish community here and I receive support from it. I go to the synagogue every Saturday morning and I often read from the Torah. I cannot sing, though.

Glossary