My mother, Melania Donathova, nee Pickova, is first on the right. I'm sitting beside her. The photo was taken after the war in Zilina
After the war no one cared that we'd been baptized. It was taken as something important for our survival. Nobody in our family was a member of a Zionist organization, only I attended Maccabi. We didn't do a lot of sports in Maccabi, I would almost say that after the war it became a cultural organization. We sang songs in Ivrit and religion was taught in a haphazard way. Occasionally we went on bicycle tours, but that's all as far as sports go. I attended Maccabi only until 1949, as after that there weren't enough of us children around.
After the war I associated mainly with Jewish children in Maccabi. In 1949 the Aliyah came and everyone moved away to Israel. In Zilina there was no one of my age left, maybe three of us. At school I had many girlfriends, I was friends with practically all the children. It's like that to this day.
My mother worked part-time in the Okrasa cooperative after the war. She did light manual labor there, I think that she worked in the packing department.
