"I was close to attacking Brunner (the head of the camp in Sereď, note of ed.), luckily, my mother prevented me from doing that. It was at the moment when he was deciding whether to send me to work in Germany with other adult men, or if I was too young for that. It would have terrible consequences, if I attacked him. Fortunately, nobody noticed how stressed I was."
“They sent us to Sereď. In the stock cars. My father was immediately separated from us and sent to Germany. He was working in Sachsenhausen, in Oranienburg. We stayed in a barrack in Sereď. And then we went to Theresienstadt. We were detouring there via Poland. I think we stopped in Auschwitz as well and then we continued. It was terrible. The train was crowded and conditions inside the train were truly poor.”
Even the recent democratic system includes people, who want to break it. It is not a surprise for me...
Jozef Pevný was born on March 22, 1935 in Bratislava in a socially respected family, which lived by Neolog Judaism. After the establishment of the warlike Slovak State, the family was granted a dispensation for deportations thanks to a medical job of his father. Later they were hiding in a flat of one family; however they were reported and revealed. The family was separated - sons and mother were deported through Sereď to Theresienstadt, while their father was sent to Sachsenhausen. After the war the family met again in Bratislava. During his whole life Jozef Pevný worked as a geologist. He doesn´t have own family and his brother lives in the USA since 1968. In 2008 Mr. Pevný moved into a senior house Ohel David in Bratislava.
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!