MVDr. Jana Freyová

* 1953

  • "Perhaps I have felt it, but my father kept it a secret from me, because he was a soldier, and we had civil wedding (witnesses with her husband), but a family from America came who just it was religiously oriented, and so it was necessary to provide food for them, because they ate kosher food. And in the 1970s, in Košice, ŠtB already knew about it. Well, it just was like that, I didn't know anything, they didn't really burden me with it and I found out later, whereas my father, as an officer, met, he was at his daughter's wedding and on the other side of this family, which came together, there were people at the first from America, at the second from Jewish origin, so he subsequently had problems, he was questioned about his contacts and that's where the origin of our family is. But I can't say that I felt it and neither did my brothers, and I didn't have such a negative, personal experience with it. The only thing that, and indeed, when people were talking, people liked to make jokes at the expense of the Jews. Or they had statements I didn't like, so it wasn't pleasant. But then again, I knew how to identify people I could talk to openly and who I didn't want to talk to at all or just about the weather. "

  • There's the Jewish question that still hangs over us somewhere. I didn't know as a child, of course I belong to such a family. My father was a Jew, my mother wasn't. They met as young people, ´zväzáci´, who were passionate because they really wanted to build such a socialist state. So in the early 1950s, such youth buildings were built and they met on the youth track as part-time workers. They were both excited to be building a new country for themselves and simply a state to give us the same way. Their marriage was normal, civil marriage and I and my brothers were born into a family where I was born ... I learned in the first grade of elementary school that when the whole class reported to religion, then religion was taught in the first three years of elementary school, and when the teacher asked who was going to religion, all the children raised their hands, only I didn't know what it was about, huh? So she sent me home to ask my parents what to sign up for. And when I got home, my father explained to me that we were like atheists, that we didn't prefer religion, and that it didn't make sense. What we see, feel and grasp is important to us. "

  • "My father came, as I said, from a Jewish family, which was a craft family. Their parents were already craftsmen, there were millers, today I would say a machinist or engineer, but then I do not know what the functions were named. So they they worked manually and no one was graduated there, yes, they had a basic education and even higher education, but focused on the profession they went in. They were never rich, they always lived in the companies they worked for, but they always gave it to their three daughters, where my grandmother, with the two sisters mentioned, grew up. They always gave them what they could and lived such a normal, bourgeois life. And they had ambitions. So my father was born there, and they had ambitions to go to study, but he was still in elementary school when fascism began and when the Slovak state began, and thus even that elementary school did not finish at the time it had. So even his studies were a little late and after the war he went to engineering high school in BA and graduated there. And when he graduated, he had to take up basic military service, and he stayed there, he had already signed up to this profession. So where was his profession used. So the family was so average, they didn't stand out in anything extraordinary. But fate didn't play with them, it wasn't easy, and from what I know, of course, from my grandmother and father's story. Some talked very little as most of those people. Indeed, they didn't even forbid asking questions, but they let us know that this was not the topic they wanted to talk about, so the information was really fragmentary. During the war, my father's grandfather worked as an engineer, today we would call his job deputy production in cement factory, and therefore ... because cement factory were interesting for the Empire, he became one of those who had an exception, and he got it and his family. My grandmother's husband, my father's father, also worked in the cement factory as an accountant, so he got an exception, and my grandmother and my father got it as a family. But that was until the uprising. And when the uprising came, they succeeded thanks to the fact that the people in those cement factory that were inclined to them and loved them, so that they managed to hide them. So they were hiding until the liberation, and the father was one of those hidden children, because he was 13 and 14 at the time. "

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I found out about my origins later

Jana Frey, nee Bagin, was born in 1953 in Bratislava, to a Jewish family. Her father was a professional soldier, which caused the family to move frequently. After the birth of two younger brothers, Jana left Bratislava for Komárno and later for Košice. As a child, witness had a more than positive attitude towards nature and animals, so she decided to dedicate her life to them. After graduating at veterinary school, she moved to Pezinok with her husband and two children, where she worked in agriculture as a company veterinarian during socialism. After the Velvet Revolution, they and their husband, who was also a veterinarian, opened a private practice. After divorce she moved back to Bratislava, she opened an veterinary ambulance. She still works as a consultant in it, even though she is retired.