Eva Mosnáková

“So after the liberation we were waiting until things calmed down and as the front was moving further towards Bratislava, we tried to work out what to do next. Our apartment was completely robbed. We had nothing left. Mrs. Kirtová, whom I stayed with when I studied at my middle school in Nitra, opened her apartment up to those who were homeless. It wasn´t just our family, there were a lot of us. Because not only did people start arriving from their hidings, but also from concentration camps and they had nowhere to go. Their apartments and houses were mostly occupied by people who, through aryanization, seized the property of those who had been deported to concentration camps. And, they did not like to see the people come back, honor to exceptions. Because some gave everything back and sheltered the returnees. Our place was robbed, so we got accommodated in Nitra. My father started to look for work. Young people of my age and older started to connect socially, there were boys arriving from the uprising, boys and girls arriving from concentration camps. I knew many of them and they were deeply hurt. There were young people, whose parents never came back and who were yanked out of their parents’ arms, and whose parents ended up in gas chambers. There were too many tragedies and I started to realize what the Holocaust in its breadth and depth actually means.”

“In 1942, when most Jews had to leave to be transported to Auschwitz, my teacher told me during a lesson: ʻEvička, would you, please, wait for me after school?’ So I waited until there were just the two of us. Then she hugged me and cried. I also cried. Because those people were our friends and we were saying goodbye. Even though my father wasn´t in danger yet, they were our friends. And it was terrible because there was a little girl going around asking: ʻWhy are you crying?’ And the girl was leaving too, and she never came back. There was another family with a 19-year old daughter severely suffering from tuberculosis who was to arrive all the way from the Vyšné Hágy Medical Center. The deportees were first concentrated in a Jewish school in Nitra and as she was unable to walk, they dragged her on to a stretcher, but she died yet before they got to the cattle car. So obviously, were they really leaving for work? But there was a couple with no children: Mr. Strasser, a fine craftsman, and Mrs. Strasser, a seamstress who made clothes for us. And when they were leaving they both said: ʻWe are not afraid, we can work hard, we will find an occupation (in Poland).’ But they never came back because they were not going to work; surely they were going to die.”