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Somehow, between the wars political talk was minimal. The politicians were political and the residents weren’t. The residents were aware of what was going on. Altogether, ten percent of the newspapers were about politics, the rest was advertising, and they had short stories, literary works. It was a totally different life then. I presume and I believe I’m not mistaken in this, that my father’s thinking was based a little in the socdem [social democratic] direction. Maybe it isn’t the result of that, but when I concerned myself a bit more with it, I was most sympathetic to that solution.
I never took part in any political activities. Politics was a completely unfamiliar thing to young people. We didn’t even know the [prime] minister’s name. We weren’t political, we didn’t know about it. There were some, three or four years older than me, who were already Communists. That also happened. I remember that, once, twice, three times I was with a young communist man, and of course, he was very convincing because I didn’t understand the whole thing.
I started repeating these things at home, not like they were my own thoughts, but because I liked these things. My father was terribly against it, he really didn’t like it. He said, ‘I ask you kindly, to leave those Leninist things alone. Forget them, they’re very unpleasant things. We need not speak of them.’
He really dissuaded me from those ideas. I came across them again, here and there, but it was really a movement, like Zionism was for the Jews. I wasn’t a Zionist, either. I wasn’t a part of any movement.
I never took part in any political activities. Politics was a completely unfamiliar thing to young people. We didn’t even know the [prime] minister’s name. We weren’t political, we didn’t know about it. There were some, three or four years older than me, who were already Communists. That also happened. I remember that, once, twice, three times I was with a young communist man, and of course, he was very convincing because I didn’t understand the whole thing.
I started repeating these things at home, not like they were my own thoughts, but because I liked these things. My father was terribly against it, he really didn’t like it. He said, ‘I ask you kindly, to leave those Leninist things alone. Forget them, they’re very unpleasant things. We need not speak of them.’
He really dissuaded me from those ideas. I came across them again, here and there, but it was really a movement, like Zionism was for the Jews. I wasn’t a Zionist, either. I wasn’t a part of any movement.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Katarina Löfflerova