Tag #133106 - Interview #78115 (Magda Frkalova)

My godfather drove me to the border, where I was supposed to make contact with some nuns. But they were very reluctant to help, and showed no interest in me at all. That was in Pavlovce [in the district of Vranov nad Toplou], when I asked them how I was to get home. They told me I could simply get on the bus, or train, and that I'd be home right away. That it wasn't a problem. That didn't seem right to me, because before that my godfather had warned me that without papers I shouldn't use public transport at all. He'd warned me that there were checkpoints everywhere, and they could easily catch me. But I was young, and took the nuns' advice.

I got onto the train. That's something that I really shouldn't have done. At the Slovak-Hungarian border the police caught me. They were threatening to hand me over to the Germans. That's something I didn't want to happen at any cost, and so I tried to wriggle out of it somehow. Luckily they were changing shifts, and one of the new policemen on the Slovak side knew my father. He was from around Trnava, and was very indebted to my father, who'd helped him more than once. He told me that if I succeeded to get away from the policeman on the Hungarian side, he'd help me on the Slovak side, and would help me hide somewhere and get me home somehow.