Maria W. in front of the family home

Maria W. in front of the family home

This picture shows my sister, Maria W., most likely in front of our home in Pusovce.

My sister liked our parents, but she was very fixated on me as well. I've got this impression that didn't study further than elementary school. When we had a farm, she worked on it like every other farmer's daughter. Her friends were the local girls. Shortly after my wedding, in March of 1942, the Guardists took her away. When they came for her, our father wasn't home. When he found out what had happened, he wanted to commit suicide. Mother stopped him. Before it happened, they had been warned by a Slovak policeman by the name of Cincala. He warned my parents that Mana [Maria's nickname] should hide, because the Guardists were coming. I don't know if our parents didn't believe it, or if they were afraid. In the end Viktor didn't commit suicide, but then their turn came. They thought that they were being sent to work. So they gave away the furniture, which was of better quality, to their friend Anderko, and my mother gave him my father's watch, which he had inherited from his grandfather, who had in turn inherited it from his grandfather. That courageous person, Juraj Anderko, has a certain measure of credit for my survival. But I'll get back to that later. They took my sister, who was 18 years old at the time, away to Poprad.

My sister went on the first transport [10] that was sent out of the Slovak State. A friend of mine from Levoca told me that she saw her in 1943, working in the so-called Canada [Canada was the name of a warehouse in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where arriving prisoners' luggage was sorted - Editor's note]. My sister supposedly borrowed a comb from her. That's all that I know of her fate.

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