Tag #138591 - Interview #78041 (otto simko)

But basically no one took an openly negative stance towards us. My father's position in Nitra was such that no one dared to in some way show some sort of hate, or something similar. Right away he was a people's judge in Nitra. When the people's court began to hold sessions, they didn't want to start anything with us. We also weren't out for revenge. What was important to us was for my brother to return. But that didn't happen. So that's how we survived the war. I had to graduate from high school by taking an accelerated program in Bratislava. After the front I moved to Bratislava. I didn't have anything in common with Nitra anymore. My father and mother stayed in Nitra along with Grandma. Only I was in Bratislava, studying. My father became the chairman of the Regional Court in Zilina. So my parents moved from Nitra to Zilina. In time my father became the chairman of the Regional Court in Bratislava. in 1953 my mother died of cancer, and is buried in Zilina at the Jewish cemetery. She had a proper Jewish funeral.

The Slansky trials [32] didn't affect my father in any special fashion. But something worse affected him. The justice minister was one very well known Jew, by the name of Reis. He was Gottwald's [33] good friend, a Communist. My father was the chairman of the Regional Court in Zilina, and this Reis stripped him of his position of chairman and designated a different person, a worker cadre, who started working there as the chairman of the Regional Court. Back then it wounded my father very much.