Selected text
I’ve got two sons; both of them were born in Nitra, in 1963 and 1965. Neither of them attended nursery school; their grandmother took care of them. Both of them attended elementary school in Nitra. The older one did high school and two years of economics. The younger one is a mechanical engineer. I tried to raise them to be proper and educated people. My sons were friends with everyone in their class. I didn’t raise them according to Jewish traditions; for starters, ours is a mixed marriage. They know what sort of family I come from. They know my roots very well. One could say that my wife and I are atheists, and that’s also how we raised our children.
I told them about what I lived through during the war, and even now we sometimes revisit various episodes from what my wife and I lived through. I summarized that period of my and my brother’s Holocaust from August 1942 to February 1945 into seven pages as a reminiscence of that time. They’re my memoirs, as well as a record of what I heard from my parents and relatives.
My older son was an extremely spirited child. At the age of 13, he took my Trabant and a classmate and they decided to go to Poland. Luckily my Trabant had more sense. The car stopped in Cetin [Maly Cetin: a town in the Nitra region]. Then one colleague of mine called me to tell me what had happened, and I had to come for the car and for my son. There were more such episodes...
I wasn’t sad when our children began leaving home. It didn’t happen all at once. We have them at home regularly, so we don’t have a feeling that our children are absent. Our older son’s university entrance interviews were stressful for us. Due to my political sanctions, he wasn’t accepted at the university where he wanted to study. Our younger one also had a very hard time getting into the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, but that was his only chance of getting into university. He also didn’t go in the direction he would have liked. Our younger son is single. The older one has a family of his own. Both of our sons are employed. The younger one is in Bratislava during the week, and at the end of the week he comes to our place to visit.
I told them about what I lived through during the war, and even now we sometimes revisit various episodes from what my wife and I lived through. I summarized that period of my and my brother’s Holocaust from August 1942 to February 1945 into seven pages as a reminiscence of that time. They’re my memoirs, as well as a record of what I heard from my parents and relatives.
My older son was an extremely spirited child. At the age of 13, he took my Trabant and a classmate and they decided to go to Poland. Luckily my Trabant had more sense. The car stopped in Cetin [Maly Cetin: a town in the Nitra region]. Then one colleague of mine called me to tell me what had happened, and I had to come for the car and for my son. There were more such episodes...
I wasn’t sad when our children began leaving home. It didn’t happen all at once. We have them at home regularly, so we don’t have a feeling that our children are absent. Our older son’s university entrance interviews were stressful for us. Due to my political sanctions, he wasn’t accepted at the university where he wanted to study. Our younger one also had a very hard time getting into the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, but that was his only chance of getting into university. He also didn’t go in the direction he would have liked. Our younger son is single. The older one has a family of his own. Both of our sons are employed. The younger one is in Bratislava during the week, and at the end of the week he comes to our place to visit.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Tibor Engel