Magda Frkalova

This is one of the last photographs of me before I was dragged off to a concentration camp. It was taken in Bratislava in the 1940s. My father knew this one railway worker in Bratislava, who lived in what today is Sancova Street. I moved into his home. To be less conspicuous, I had my hair bleached blond. I started working for a company named Vatra. It was a company that owned forests and sold wood to Germany. There I filled in various invoices and did office work. But before I could have a job, I had to have papers. False ones of course. The railway man I lived with put me in touch with the forger. He told me where I'd find him and how much it cost. The forger then made me false papers in the name Polakovicova, and in them it said that I was from Snina. He left me my first name, so that I wouldn't get confused. I don't know anymore exactly how much he asked for it back then, but I know that it was quite a lot of money. Once I was walking along the street in Bratislava, and met a former classmate of mine. And despite my bleached hair, she recognized me right away. ?You're Magda, aren't you? You're Jewish, aren't you? And you've got bleached hair?? Really, I'll tell you, some of those girls were capable of being quite mean...