Armin Herman and Zaneta Ganselova with a friend

Armin Herman and Zaneta Ganselova with a friend

I don't know where this photograph was taken, but it shows my husband's parents, Armin Herman Gansel and Zaneta Ganselova (the lady on the left). We estimate that the photo dates from the 1960s. My husband's parents lived in Banska Bystrica. Around 1952 or 1953, I can't tell you exactly, there was this campaign, that they moved richer people, or people that had once been business owners, out of their own apartments or houses. During 48 hours they had to abandon their own house. This also happened to my in-laws. They had to abandon their own house and they moved them to Spania Dolina. Into horrible, horrible conditions. I can't be described. Into this one horrible house. A wet, moldy one. It had a kitchen and one room. But they had to live on something, so my father-in-law, that was during the time I was getting married, so in 1954, did shift work in the Harmanec paper mill. He didn't have a demanding job. He was in some electrical room and recorded from some gauges how much electricity was being used. But he had to do shift work, at night as well, and so on. What was also horrible, my husband's mother took the death of her son very hard, the one that hadn't returned from captivity. She had serious psychological problems because of it. My husband's mother died on 4th February 1967. They buried her in Banska Bystrica, in an Orthodox cemetery. After the death of his wife, my husband's father moved to Brno. In Brno my father-in-law made a close connection with the Jewish religious community. He went there every Friday and Saturday, to the synagogue. When he died, in 1975, the official part of his funeral was in Brno. A very nice, very well done funeral, that my husband and I attended with the children as well. During the night the funeral service then drove him to Banska Bystrica and the next day they buried him in Bystrica, in the Orthodox cemetery beside his wife, with us in attendance.
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