“Thank God, I went to work to the phone factory. They employed twelve girls... There were three brothers, one of them was a boss and the other two were foremen. They were responsible for certain groups of workers. My chief was Peter and the chief of another group was Willy and there was the only boss for everybody. He was a really intelligent man. Peter was also very kind, but Willy was the opposite of them. I said that when the Russians would come, we would hang him (laugh). Of course, it didn’t happen. Then, we were assigned the tasks. Do you know what a lathe is? Some of us had to work with it. There also was a revolving turret or a drill. I worked with a manual drill in production of telephones to be used in war. I had such a pressed sheet metal, which I had to put on a peg and press it with the drill. I was supposed to make 190 to 200 pieces. As I was young, I really managed to make it.”
“What about the escape? You know, there was a fence, of course. On the one side there was a grain field. My husband cut a hole in the fencing and told me, ‘Go over there.’ When the policemen whistled, we were ordered to go straight to them. But then, when I heard whistling, I didn’t run towards the policeman waiting for me. I ran where my husband had told me. And there was a tram near the hole. He was waiting for me there and we went to the station together.”
“We came from work in the evening; we were always transported under police escort. I remember, we had some spinach for dinner. It was washed badly, so there was a lot of sand. It was picked up, washed a bit and immediately given to us. You know, I was always afraid of all those things, I mean the policemen with truncheons above all. I don’t know what happened then, but I grabbed my bowl and tipped it over. The policeman saw it, but he didn’t beat me. We had a week card called Essen, Essen, which means to eat in German. I always had to cut off a ticket and give them one for breakfast and one for lunch. In case we had no tickets, we got nothing to eat. Then other girls offered a piece of their own bread to me, but I was still hungry, because one bite was not enough. I remember I got nothing that week. However, I already knew my future husband; we were dating at that time. He used to bring a piece of cake to me as he had the tickets. He also brought it to my friend, who I shared a bunk bed with; I used to sleep down and she up. But what was a piece of cake? Later he asked me why I hadn’t told him, he would surely bring some bread to me as he had tickets for it. But could a young girl ask a boy, who was still a bit unfamiliar to her, to bring a piece of bread to her? How could I say, ‘Bring some bread to me, I had nothing to eat!’?”
Mária Macková was born as Maria Stepanovna Brusková on June 16, 1924 in the town of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine, which was a part of the Soviet Union back then. Her mother was of Ukrainian origin and her father was a Russian coming from Moscow. Mária had five siblings. In September 1942, she was abducted by the Germans to the forced labour camp located in Germany. The journey took about two weeks and there were more than 50 other people in a cattle car with her. After two weeks she had spent in the Dachau concentration camp, she was moved to the labour camp in Munich. At first she was placed to the factory producing telephones. She had to work six days a week from 6 am to 6 pm; however, she was not allowed to leave the camp even in her time off. Later, she met the Slovak boy Ján Macek and fell in love with him. In February 1944 she gave birth to their child. However, as the Germans did not know she was pregnant, they punished her and moved to an armament factory, where she had to work even harder than before. Mária decided to marry Ján Macek exactly on her 20th birthday, on June 16, 1944. A few days later, they fled from the camp through a hole in the fence and headed to Slovakia. Mária managed to get a Slovak passport in Vienna. Few days later they arrived in the village of Moravské Lieskové, where they lived for several years. Later, they moved to the Czech town of Frýdlant, where the family spent seven years and then they returned to Slovakia, to the town of Trenčín, where Mária started working in the textile factory of Merina. She also lived in Trenčín in February 2015. Passed away on 24 June 2021.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
