So, we slept there and we said okay there so we can stay there. Just, we can stay with them until we see what's being done, well. So we were also a bit unlucky, but as they say under, under.
By light.
Light is the greatest darkness. How is it that it shades. That light shades. It, that lamp blocks the main light, so under this, it is dark.
So and.
Such, such a saying.
Under the light is the greatest darkness. That's what they say.
Under the light is the greatest.
Yes, yes, but why? You explain to Sandra that why, why. Well, what was there?
Oh, because we were there for about a few days and at night, in the evening, suddenly they knocked on the door and we came to the door and there were about seven German soldiers standing there. Uh, so we got scared, but then we became friends with them. They didn't ask at all, no one ever knew. They just considered everyone a partisan. But it was, so they were ordinary soldiers. But me, they made it there, because it was a nice house on the grass, on the road and in the front, in front there is such a big, such porch. And there they opened an office. Orckomandum, the local commander's office there. They slept there, seven men slept there and on the ground. And. And then, so to us, then it turned out that it was helpful to us, because we gained respect. They opened the orckomandum there and people, if someone wanted to go to the city, to Banská Bystrica, for example. So, so they had to have a pasír šajn from the German commandant's office, because they worked there, they made barriers at the city limits and everyone had to have a pass. So the farmers came, the cow is sick, they have to go to the city.
But it was also a bit of a dramatic, dramatic journey when you went to that Mikuláš, wasn't it?
Come on, okay. Well, there and there it was, we were also there by taxi to, to Liptovský Mikuláš and so we were there one night and the next night the police came after us there. So they took us at night, they took us at two in the morning. We were taken back to Ružomberok and so the transport was supposed to go before lunch the next day, we were locked up in a jail. At the police in Ružomberok and so we were locked up there and we didn't know what was, what was, what's happening. Mom and I sat there in that, in that. What's it called? Jail.
In prison.
Prisons. Yes, come on. And we waited there, but at about ten in the morning, the door suddenly opened and the police chief of Ružomberok, came in. Mr. Palčin, gentleman, I think so, it was his name. Sir,...okay. I have, I have it written in that book. But.
I have it here.
Okay, so yes, and so after what happened. So he came. He said that the transport has already left, so we are letting you home and you will be in it, in the next transport.
So, did he rescue, you and your mother?
He, he let us go, but then I did, then we found out how it happened. My uncle, who was, was the one who was in the Svätý Kríž on the road. He resigned there and got a job as a city engineer because he said you would protect your mother so she is in Ružomberok, where she lived. And he lived, we all lived in that one house. So he worked for it, and he knew him very well. I forgot his name, but it was the district chief.
But the situation has become radicalized, gradually. As well, the first moments were that they were taken over by the Jewish population, that is. Or they were fired from their original work activities.
Yes, it was. All the businesses, shops and everything were aryanized. That's what it was called.
Yes.
Aryanization and.
You may mention, for example, it's such a nice story when your uncle Ernbáči told you what you did with your skis. Skis. And he didn't want to hand over his skis. Well, for example, what happened then.
No, so I, leave me. Let's talk about the more important things. So I don't know, so let's move with the questions, otherwise.
Well, and therefore the situation when it radicalized, you actually remembered that year as well. So let's move to the year fortytwo. You already mentioned that you had a Bar Micva in June.
Yes.
You can. You remember how it was in progress, because it was already.
Well, the way how it was. Of course I did. It was so that it all started gradually. These anti-Jewish laws. And so the first thing was that they closed the barrehouses, and all the jewish. Then the shop of my grandmother. There it was, a Jewish shop had to be listed and it was always announced. We were, drummed, the village, then. The city had a drummer, a drummer, and he went to announce all these new orders. And that was, I remember it the best. It was. Drum, drum, so I ran, I always ran on, drummed on the street corner and then.
Hallo, you're stuck with me. Hallo, hallo. Well, are we hearing? The last time I heard there was a drummer on a street corner, I don't know where.
Yes Yes. Well, he was always there. Well, we should have gone right away, still worried that the drummer was drumming, that it was mostly Jewish, anti-Jewish laws at that time. It is known that Jews cannot, must not go out after six o'clock, and so on. You know, or it is known, that Jews have to hand over sporting goods and gold and jewellery and so on. It was one after the other one.
The memorial, Juraj Vago, was born on June 15, 1929 in Vrútky, into a Jewish family. In 1930, his family moved to Košice, where he lived with his mother and father until 1938. His father, Arpád Vago, owned a café in Košice, Café Astoria. His original name was Vaksberger, but due to the war he changed his name to Vago. Juraj‘s mother, Blanka Bihelerová, came from Ružomberok from a family that owned a mixed store and they were selling soda water. Neither of the families was a pious family, they celebrated only the basic holidays. Although Juraj lived as the only child in Košice, he spent the holidays alternately, once with his grandparents in Vrútky at the Vaksberger estate or with his mother‘s parents in Ružomberok. Due to his parents‘ busy schedule, babysitter Anna took care of him in Košice.
Although he returned to Vrútky with his parents in 1938, due to the death of his mother‘s father, they decided to live in Ružomberok with their grandmother. The faulted year for the Vago family was 1942, when Juraj‘s father was taken, in the Svätý Kríž, to the Majdanek concentration camp. He has never come back from there. Although Juraj and his mother were invited to transport their father, they decided that they would rather fight and hide.
Their escapes were different. Initially, they stayed in Ružomberok, where they received echoes from their mother‘s brother, who worked as an engineer at the local office. Later they had to leave Ružomberok and go to Uncle Steiner in Vrútky, where they hid for almost two years, until the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising. All these journeys were accompanied by dramatic experiences. After the suppression of the SNP, in 1944, they fled to Banská Bystrica, where they were officially registered inhabitants. After its liberation by the Russians on March 25, 1945, they waited in Zvolen until the situation calmed down and returned home a week later, to Ružomberok.
At the turn of 1947 and 1948, Juraj‘s mother remarried, to Eugene Grossman, who owned haberdashery in Košice. She moved there and Juraj due to school, he lived alternately in Ružomberok and Košice.
Juraj‘s studies at the grammar school were complicated by pneumonia and he did not finish school. He made a town school and in 1950 he graduated from the Secondary Industrial School in Ružomberok, with school leaving examination. In the same year he was admitted to the University of Mechanical Engineering in Brno, which after the first year was transformed into a military academy. Juraj moved to the same department in Prague, where he successfully graduated in 1954. In that year, Juraj got a job at Keramoprojekt in Prague, where he was employed for more than a year. Subsequently, in 1955, he transferred to the Research Institute of Thermal Engineering in Prague, where he remained until his escape, until 1958.
In 1958, Juraj managed to escape from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, to Berlin, to the American zone, but successfully for the second time. Until 1961, he worked in Frankfurt and obtained an international refugee passport. In that year, he decided to emigrate to the United States, where his first job was a furnace manufacturing company in Boston. He married on January 24, 1971 and had two beautiful children, a daughter Mišel and a son David. He moved because of a job in America several times until he settled in New Jersey with his wife Dana and two children.
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!
