Ivan Pasternák

“Well, and they were trying to get evidence, who from the family or that who survived. When did you learn about fate, for example of your father? Well, my mother died in 1962, when I was eighteen and has never found out where my father died. My mother waited seven or eight years after the war that he would return from some prison or from somewhere in Germany or from Russia from the gulag, that he would return, because we had heard of such cases, of people who returned eventually, and they were, and they were long missing, but it wasn't my father's case. I learned only after the revolution, that is, in the year one thousand nine hundred and ninety-one, two, I was given an address in Germany. In Germany, they have a central archive in Arolsen. I wrote a letter to Arolsen and then I waited a long, long time, and when I almost forgot that I had written them a request, if they had any, some paper about my father Teodor Pasternák, what had happened to him at all. Well, and then after many months, over a year, a year and a half, I got an envelope where it was, where I have a paper about it. Although, a little distorted, because instead, it is written that the father, and there is written in hungarian Tivadar Pasternák, which is Teodor and the city is not Prešov, but Polšov, Slovakia, and the street is right, Kováčska street, and that he died 15. January 1945, in Dachau in the Kaufering. It was the Dachau concentration camp, which is very close to Munich, some ten, fifteen kilometers north. It had several such satellite camps and one of them was Kaufering and I was in Dachau and I asked if I could visit the Kaufering, so they said it was useless because there are already housing estates and houses, and in that place where he was, there is not a memorial table or a statue, so it would be very heartbreaking and, and I'd rather not go there. "

"And then the period around november eighty-nine, and especially after november eighty-nine, you also took an active part in, how you perceived it and how you may have taken an active part, either at the demonstrations or then as part of the general strike. Yes, so I remember it very well that I went, so I was still in Dolné hony at school and from Dolné hony I went home by trolleybus, and suddenly I saw that a gentleman joined me and one of our students next to him and I say where they are going together, father and son. Teacher, you don't know where we're going, but we already have november and there are demonstrations, we're going to SNP Square. I say, but I heard something in the news, because at school when I was preparing for the next day, when I was preparing to the three, four o' clock, I had the radio on, so I heard something. But he says, he says come with us. I'm saying, Heňo, do you mean it seriously? And, this Henrich, my student and his father took me for the first time and then I participated regularly. When I came home from the event, where we stuck with the keys, and where Milan Kňažko and Janko Budaj and their guests were in the stands, it was interesting that I told them at home that what was happening and my Zuzka was saying, but we we saw it better on TV because they nicely zoomed in on everyone who lectured there. We didn't hear anything backwards and forwards, the microphones didn't work backwards and forwards, something was lost backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards it was heard that you would come to the corridor. And those were interesting things, but I remember very well those days before, thirty years ago, when we went regularly and my brother and his wife and I always met in the square, in the SNP Square. Those were the years after November seventeenth. Then you got involved as a teacher in the general strike, right? Yes. How did your school react to this? Yes, of course, we told parents that in order not to be afraid that the school would continue to work, that we would not allow it, that we would not strike in a way to leave school, and that we would not come to school. We were striking in such a way that we got such a blue, not black tape, in the common room, like when someone dies when they are sad, but a blue tape, and we said that blue is good, it's the color of the Democratic Party.”

“It is necessary to mention, that the guards and Germans divided us in Patrónka station separately to a group of men and women. My stroller was thrown away to trash, to a ditch, my mom lifted me up and that's when my father saw me for the last time. Because men went to one side and women to the other side. My mom told me, that the men most probably went to the railway station Železná studienka, from where they were directly taken through Žilina to Auschwitz. There was a trace that my father was also in Auschwitz, then he was transported to Dachau.”

“I guess I went already to my first class, what was about six years after the war, when she found out from one Košice lawyer that he was in Dachau concentration camp with my father, who didn't survive it. And it was not only my father, but the bad luck was in that three siblings, three brothers, met in one concentration camp. The older brother of my father Vilmoš – Viliam Pasternák, had his son there as well. His name was Tomáš and he was thirteen-fourteen years old. He needed food to survive, thus the three brothers, everything they got, they passed on to this young boy. It wasn't much in that concentration camp. None of them survived. They all died in Dachau, Dachau-Kaufering.”

“We have never spoken about it with my mom. She always just cried when mentioning this topic of how many people from our family died. Well, it was more than 20 people of Pasternák family, who never returned back after the war, and from my mother's side another ten or fifteen people, who totals in 35 – 40 family members. From Pasternák family, only one aunt survived, because she got married in 1936 in Cleveland, USA. So auntie Eržika, born in 1905 survived the wars in America, but all other father's siblings ended up in concentration camps. Thus, this is a very sad history and that is also a reason why I am a member of such a club as is the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. I try to be their active member and I offer my service of lecturing at high schools to let people know that there was war and some people by luck or by mistake have survived it. … I am a member of the Hidden Child in Bratislava as well.”