This is the identification of my husband Vojtech Hecht, which guaranteed him and his family an exception from deportation. It was issued by the Regional Office in Michalovce on 7 August 1942.
In 1942, right when talk of deportations began, I got married. There was a cell of illegal workers here that helped me very much. An acquaintance of mine, who lived in the former Soviet Union, came along and said: ‘We won’t allow for Heda to be deported. Two years ago you lost a daughter. We’ll get her married for you.’ Dr. Hecht came to see me, later he was named Horal. He told me: ‘I’ll marry you, but after the war we’ll get divorced, because I’ve got a girlfriend in Prague. We’ll help each other; I was told that you’re honest people.’
He was also a Jew, it wasn’t even possible otherwise. I also had a boyfriend, a Jewish boy, who was finishing university in Prague, but couldn’t finish, because Adolf arrived. His name was Goldstein. We were married at the Piestany city hall. The official was this ‘nice’ man, and said: ‘Even so, they’ll deport you.’ My husband was polite, and said to him: ‘So we’ll go together.’ We didn’t feel much like laughing. Someone ratted on us, that we’d been formally married. Luckily, a week after the wedding they transferred my husband to Michalovce. As a good wife, I thus had to move with him. My husband was a doctor.
As it was only a ‘paper marriage,’ we got divorced right after the war.
