Soňa Goldenbergová

"Well, the conditions were catastrophic. Father was, he was terribly ill...even after liberation, he was not able to return to Prešov. For nine months...weeks, he was in the hospital to somehow recover, and he actually returned to Prešov only in July 1945. So they only met in Prešov... Only in Prešov. They didn't know about themselves...they didn't know about themselves at all. Although my mother said that someone told my father that she gave birth in a concentration camp by cesarean section, but that she was very sick, so it looks like she and the baby died. So the father was aware that they were no longer alive and the mother knew absolutely nothing about the father. And did he remember that particular moment when he was freed? That's how it might have looked... No, he didn't mention it. He didn't talk at all. I only know about my father's life, actually during that period, from the biographies he wrote, but he didn't say such detailed things. Father… And…sorry, I interrupted you. No, take it easy. Ask. And I also wanted to ask that the fact that the mother stayed in that hospital and gave birth to you, and the appellants, probably did not concern her. No, no, no...that didn't concern her. At least...she didn't say she was on appeal. She gave birth there by cesarean section. The delivery was also performed by a gynecologist...of Jewish origin. He was there from the beginning, from the creation of the Sereď concentration camp, Dr. Pavol Mayer. He was actually there with the whole family, with his mother, father and uncle... and actually the whole family, it was also a medical family. Well, actually, when they were put in the cattle station already in March...the twelfth or the ninth of March...it was the penultimate transport that went to Terezín, so in that wagon were...the whole Mayer family...and they were very helpful to my mother. You weren't even half a year old then... I was three months old. Then they also mentioned how difficult it must have been for the mother? It was very challenging. Mom mentioned that it was a very long journey, that it lasted more than a week. A little forward and then back. She said she didn't know why, but it took a long time to get to Terezín."

"Immediately after joining, they came to me...I don't know under what title to join the party. Like in that college... At the University. Yes, in college. As I said before, I didn't connect the fifties with politics, with the system... I connected it with the consciousness that they liberated us, what they were doing, actually what was the propaganda in that period. So I'm kind of naive, I didn't even think about it, and I submitted... Yes, I submitted an application... it was in sixty-six. With the fact that I knew that I would be a candidate for two years and then I would leave, and there would be nothing more from the party. So I entered with this knowledge. But there was a very active chairman of the party at the school, an assistant... who came to me after a year and said that he had promoted me, moved me up the ranks, and that he was applying to the party. So that's how I got into the party, but at school... I wouldn't even say that the whole party organization was run formally. Those meetings were held...but that was a little bit...in the sixty-sixth, it was such a relaxed period, so there were no violent actions or violent involvement. Not only with party members, but also with party leaders. So, so actually... well, and then the sixty-eighth year came."

"Actually, since we are already sixty-eighth, I would like to ask, actually, you already had that after the statesmen...but specifically on August sixty-eighth, the twentieth, when the occupying troops arrived. How... where did it hit you, what did you experience and how do you remember it. Well, that August, twenty-first August sixty-eight, I remember very well. I was already in Prešov because both of my parents were sick. That's why I had to return to Prešov after finishing school. They were both lying in bed. In the morning...an acquaintance came and rang the bell. And she says: "The Russians occupied us." I'll never forget, both parents in bed, hey...I'll never forget, I went out into the city and tanks at the post office...slanted eyes...I'll never forget that. Those boys didn't even know where they were, and one could only be scared of what would be in their mind when, and when they would shoot. So the memories of the sixty-eighth in Prešov are awful. I couldn't deal much with this period, because I had other worries...with my parents...but also what I experienced, I perceived...unequivocally negatively. Were there any riots between the residents and the troops? No, they weren't. There were no riots in Prešov, no. Neither the shooting nor the dead... were in Prešov. What I noticed. Maybe the tankers... what they used to do, maybe the boards, they were so uncomfortable... Yes. Did this happen in Prešov? That was happening in Prešov. On the roads, it happened everywhere in Prešov. So you know... I used to live on Hlavná... in the center... not on Hlavná Street... in the center of Prešov. There I saw tanks deployed, soldiers...I preferred to go home. Certainty is a machine gun.”

"In May, forty-four actually had to leave Prešov… the whole Glačtajn family. Except for one sister with a child, who was married and no longer lived in Prešov...she actually perished in Auschwitz and the sister who was in India. So all the Glačtajn were in Sásová, they stayed there in one family, already...I think her name was Kováčová. And after suppressing the Slovak National Uprising, they left for the mountains. They were in Staré hory, they were in Turecká village, they were in Krížná. When they were in Turecká, they met the commander of the partisan unit, Yegorov, and he directed them to Krížna, where his partisan headquarters was. When they reached Krížna, Yegorov was already on staff and they were unexpectedly ambushed by the Germans. So there was a big shootout. Everyone ran where they could and ours saved themselves at the mountain hut, above Dolný Harmanec. They hid there for a very short time, because a woodsman discovered them, who immediately betrayed them to the Germans. They knew it was a hoarder, because immediately, the Germans came for them. They dragged them to Dolný Harmanec, where they were taken over by the police... and they dragged them to the Gestapo in Martin. They were interrogated in Martin. They especially wanted to know the location of the partisans and were very interested in where their properties were in Prešov. With whom, where and what. Of course, they took all the valuables they had. Only my mother had a wedding band and a gold ring on her hand, which she got from her father when she was sixteen years old. Now it is with me... so she kept that one. The rest...the Germans took everything from them and actually transported them to Sereď."

"Zolo was born for the second time. He is allergic, so we wanted to go to Yugoslavia again. The husband still had Soviet citizenship, so he could go without problems. And that's when I applied for travel for the second time. Someone else appeared again, I think. You called me again and then he scolded me, he was very rude then. I already refused that, I said no, under no circumstances. He said: 'What do you think that we are doing something illegal? And you, as a party, are obliged.' I say: 'Whether I am obliged or not... tell me whether you will give me a travel clause or not. If you don't give it to me, my husband will go with the kid. And if you give me...' He didn't tell me anything and they gave me an exit clause."

"My mother came with me to Prešov. As a six-month-old child, I weighed 2.5 kg. I immediately went to the hospital. The doctor told my mother that she could go and dig my grave and she could hang herself, like with a kid like that. Maybe he was a bit clueless. The medical staff did not always behave honestly and fairly. I can thank my mother a lot for her tenacity and strong will to live, a fact. I can't even describe it exactly. My thirteen-year-old cousin said that they couldn't even watch her make me eat. She cooked some spinach, fed me, and I put it out. She stood up, cooked again, fed again. She just had a terrible tenacity and strong will to keep me alive. She managed that, didn't she?'

"In March, March 12 or 13, 1945, it was the penultimate transport from Sereď to Terezín. That's when they actually put us in a cattle car. The mother gave birth by caesarean section, which means she was still in a very bad state of health, and we went to Terezín. There we were two small children: it was Ďuri Alexander, who is like my brother. We were in one room. Aunt Iby Alexandrová with Ďuri and my mother with me. They helped each other. One was looking for food, for cigarettes, for bread, that was my mother. And the other babysat. Somehow they lived to be liberated in May 1945. After liberation, my mother was still in Terezín. She talked about how she kept going to the station and waiting, because they were passing through Terezín after the liberation."

"I would say that my mother and aunt told me about those events. But I didn't put it into context. Rather, I would say that now on my old knees I am more aware of it and I am experiencing it and I am terribly sorry that I did not ask my mother more and did not ask her to tell me about it. For example, I know that she told me, with one ear in and the other out, how the train stopped at different stations, how she went to wash, how the people with whom she traveled on the train wondered how clean I was, how I was wearing myself in such conditions things tip top and clean. But to ask more closely, or what it was like in Terezín, what she fed me in Seredi, I assume that she definitely didn't have milk, I don't know. I didn't even care, I didn't even ask. Mom didn't talk either. Aunt Iby Alexandrová told me: 'You know, sometimes we exchanged bread for cigarettes and your mother got dressed, she had such a dark blue dress with a white collar, I was also worried about her so that as a woman in the camp she wouldn't have problems with the Germans, because she was very nice and well she looked So that's how I handle some things. But I didn't really listen to Aunt by either. When I was studying here in Bratislava, I went to visit her. “