Tag #137966 - Interview #78790 (Alexander Bachnar)

Our group was later decorated with the highest military honors. The Czechoslovak War Cross [18], medals for courage. I myself had the War Cross and a medal for courage [Czechoslovak medal for courage in the face of the enemy], as well as the Order of The Slovak National Uprising. [The Order of The Slovak National Uprising was awarded for merit during the Slovak National Uprising. It was awarded in three classes, Order I. Class, Order II. Class and the Memorial Medal, depending on the bearer's merits.] Plus one Soviet decoration. The last time I was supposed to receive, on 11th September 2001, an award from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Right on the day when it blew up there, so I couldn't receive the decoration. Because that day everything was closed, you couldn't get anywhere. I went there for four days but stayed for two weeks, because there weren't any planes flying. I was later given the decoration by the American ambassador in Slovakia.

Thanks to this I was one of the ones, one of three, who were received by President Bush [George W. Bush] in February of this year (2005), here in Bratislava. The former ambassador, Butora [Martin Butora (b. 1944): 1990 - 1992, advisor to President of CSFR Vaclav Havel, during the years 1999 - 2003 the ambassador of the Slovak Republic in the USA], the former minister Demes [Pavol Demes (b. 1956): since the year 2000 the director for Central and Eastern Europe of the US non-governmental organization German Marshall Fund, located in Bratislava. Recently Foreign Policy magazine ranked him among the 100 most influential intellectuals in the world] and I. Even now I've received an invitation from the embassy, that the ambassador has a photograph for me from the reception with George Bush.