Selected text
After the war I wrote my high school entrance exams, and after graduation I went to Bratislava to study at the Slovak Technical University. I managed to successfully graduate, even though in second year, in 1951, during the Slansky trials, they expelled me from school.
They gave various reasons: that I was a careerist, that I had a bad – capitalist – class background and so on. One of them was even true. I really don’t have a fondness for manual labor. That was true, I was always more inclined towards mental and not physical labor, which back then meant mainly work with a pick and shovel. In order to prove my fondness for labor, I applied for brigade work, washing windows at a newly built building on campus.
During the brigade work, I received an invitation to register for the next year. The woman clerk at the dean’s office didn’t want to register me. The dean of the faculty resolved it. He formally gave me a dean’s ‘reprimand’ for ‘behavior unbefitting Communist youth.’ ‘And now run and get yourself registered.’
Before I graduated the Communists tried to expel me one more time, but this time the university chancellor came to my rescue. He then talked about such cases in television after the year 1989 [30], that he didn’t allow good students to be expelled for ‘singing Communist Youth songs out of tune.’
However, I received such a cadre profile that I could only work in a factory. In it they wrote that they had expelled me from school, but that they’d refused it at the chancellor’s office, because ‘the chancellor’s office contained elements similar to Ruzena R.’
This is what I had written in my cadre profile, which followed me my whole life until retirement. By those ‘elements’ they meant that there were some Jews sitting in the chancellor’s office, and that they had arranged it for me. It took me several decades before I realized this.
And that at the instigation of a non-Jewish girlfriend of mine. Those were the 1950s, today we know that they were strongly anti-Semitic, but back then we didn’t understand it. So finally I finished my studies after all. Everything ended up fine, just in Marxism-Leninism I couldn’t get higher than a C, the worst grade, but enough to pass the exam.
After finishing my studies, I got a placement offer for the Dimitrovka [Editor’s note: The Juraj Dimitrov Chemical Works, today named Istrochem. One of the oldest companies in the chemical industry, it was founded in 1873 by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.]
Apparently my ‘diagnosis’ [cadre profile] contributed to this. They greeted me enthusiastically, because they had a shortage of engineers. Back then, no one wanted to start working there voluntarily. The conditions there were very bad. Whoever could, got out of there. I used to say that through a process of natural selection, the only ones to remain there will be either stupid or with a bad cadre profile. In other words, people who didn’t have a chance anywhere else.
My cadre profile chained me to that place all my life, which they made sure was thoroughly bitter. In what way? My boss, who was my boss for ten years, was a terrible anti-Semite. When I needed only one day’s holiday, because I wanted to have a long weekend because I was going to go visit my mother in Topolcany, his answer was: ‘Not on Monday, take Tuesday off,’ and so on. During the time he was my boss, he never even once gave me a raise. After 1968 [31] conditions improved a bit.
After 1968, a slightly softer era began in the plant as well. My position improved a bit, too. I no longer had an anti-Semite for a boss, and I was treated decently, too. In 1983 I was eligible for retirement, as I had a so-called 255 [32]; because they asked me, I stayed there and worked for another three years part-time.
Those were the nicest times in the plant where I worked for 33 years. In June 1986 I retired. I still remember that the most beautiful day of my life, besides 2nd April 1945, when we were liberated, of course, was 30th June 1986. After that I did translations at home and worked as an interpreter. I translated mainly from German to Slovak and vice-versa. This I did until 1991.
They gave various reasons: that I was a careerist, that I had a bad – capitalist – class background and so on. One of them was even true. I really don’t have a fondness for manual labor. That was true, I was always more inclined towards mental and not physical labor, which back then meant mainly work with a pick and shovel. In order to prove my fondness for labor, I applied for brigade work, washing windows at a newly built building on campus.
During the brigade work, I received an invitation to register for the next year. The woman clerk at the dean’s office didn’t want to register me. The dean of the faculty resolved it. He formally gave me a dean’s ‘reprimand’ for ‘behavior unbefitting Communist youth.’ ‘And now run and get yourself registered.’
Before I graduated the Communists tried to expel me one more time, but this time the university chancellor came to my rescue. He then talked about such cases in television after the year 1989 [30], that he didn’t allow good students to be expelled for ‘singing Communist Youth songs out of tune.’
However, I received such a cadre profile that I could only work in a factory. In it they wrote that they had expelled me from school, but that they’d refused it at the chancellor’s office, because ‘the chancellor’s office contained elements similar to Ruzena R.’
This is what I had written in my cadre profile, which followed me my whole life until retirement. By those ‘elements’ they meant that there were some Jews sitting in the chancellor’s office, and that they had arranged it for me. It took me several decades before I realized this.
And that at the instigation of a non-Jewish girlfriend of mine. Those were the 1950s, today we know that they were strongly anti-Semitic, but back then we didn’t understand it. So finally I finished my studies after all. Everything ended up fine, just in Marxism-Leninism I couldn’t get higher than a C, the worst grade, but enough to pass the exam.
After finishing my studies, I got a placement offer for the Dimitrovka [Editor’s note: The Juraj Dimitrov Chemical Works, today named Istrochem. One of the oldest companies in the chemical industry, it was founded in 1873 by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.]
Apparently my ‘diagnosis’ [cadre profile] contributed to this. They greeted me enthusiastically, because they had a shortage of engineers. Back then, no one wanted to start working there voluntarily. The conditions there were very bad. Whoever could, got out of there. I used to say that through a process of natural selection, the only ones to remain there will be either stupid or with a bad cadre profile. In other words, people who didn’t have a chance anywhere else.
My cadre profile chained me to that place all my life, which they made sure was thoroughly bitter. In what way? My boss, who was my boss for ten years, was a terrible anti-Semite. When I needed only one day’s holiday, because I wanted to have a long weekend because I was going to go visit my mother in Topolcany, his answer was: ‘Not on Monday, take Tuesday off,’ and so on. During the time he was my boss, he never even once gave me a raise. After 1968 [31] conditions improved a bit.
After 1968, a slightly softer era began in the plant as well. My position improved a bit, too. I no longer had an anti-Semite for a boss, and I was treated decently, too. In 1983 I was eligible for retirement, as I had a so-called 255 [32]; because they asked me, I stayed there and worked for another three years part-time.
Those were the nicest times in the plant where I worked for 33 years. In June 1986 I retired. I still remember that the most beautiful day of my life, besides 2nd April 1945, when we were liberated, of course, was 30th June 1986. After that I did translations at home and worked as an interpreter. I translated mainly from German to Slovak and vice-versa. This I did until 1991.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ruzena R.