Tag #137963 - Interview #78790 (Alexander Bachnar)

I ended there and I got an order to go to the Novaky labor camp. At one time I loaded coal there. Then I taught at the local elementary school. And when the school principal, Jozef Weiss, went to a camp in Hungary, I became an elementary school principal. At that time they were teaching using the latest methods at that school, it had a very high standard. The school put out its own magazine, called Ozvena. I had thought that the magazine had since disappeared, but from Professor Niznansky I found out that one issue had been preserved. [Niznansky, Eduard (born 1955): historian and university professor.] He even uses citations from this magazine in his work. The upbringing in that school also had a very high standard.

There was this one exceptionally capable student, Tomas Kyrian, who in one introduction in this magazine wrote a beautiful thought worthy of an adult philosopher. He was 14 years old when he wrote that Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony, in an effort to show his immense feeling for humanity, for solidarity, is returning to the most elementary musical instrument, to the human voice. That was written by a 14-year-old boy. This Tomas Kyrian unfortunately died, together with his mother. His father was saved thanks to the fact that when someone shot at him he had a spoon in his pocket. The bullet was deflected by the spoon and didn't injure him. He fell down and thought that he was dead.