“And they gave us lice. So they cut my hair and they cut all of my brother’s hair away. My hair used to be kind of light but then I grew hair that was pitch black, dense and curly. It was like a ball that you couldn’t even comb. [Witness’ mother: ‘She was such a black, curly, beautiful Jewish girl.’] Back to the story. They cut our hair and then we were somewhere else, I don’t recall where. We lived in a cellar in a village on the territory of the Slovak State. I stayed home with my brother and we were forbidden to go anywhere, but I wanted to go out. The rain was over and I played in the street with the water and mud. Suddenly someone stopped by me, wearing high boots and talking Slovak I guess, not German because I could not understand them; and they said, what a beautiful girl. They likely thought, ‘What is the Jewish child doing here?’ But aloud, they said, what a nice girl. And, ‘Where is your mum? Such a pretty girl.’ They took me by the hand and I still could not see them – just their boots, the tall boots. And I led them to our dwelling, our cellar. Mum returned in a moment and so did dad, and the men wanted their documents. So the parents showed them their documents and they still took them away with us, with Petr and me. They took us to an office and I don’t know if they were Germans, but more likely they were the local Nazis, Hlinka’s people; they wanted to see the documents again and said, ‘How come you have a Jewish child? You are Jews!’ [Witness’ mother: ‘I got down on my knees like a Catholic, started praying and made everyone pray the Catholic way.’] And dad said: ‘What Jews, excuse me?’ They said: ‘Just look at the girl – a typical Jewish child.’ And my brother was a blue-eyed blonde. [Witness’ mother: ‘He [her husband] stood up and said: ‘Did you have the child with a Jew?’] So they put up a show. Dad stood my brother on the table and said: ‘Just look, he’s a typical Aryan child.’ And they were quiet. My brother and dad were circumcised, but lucky they did not check. We do this on the eighth day after birth. They didn’t look but they didn’t trust us either; we had to pack up. I think there was not much to pack; there were fewer things left as we went, and they gave us an escort. A guy in a tall hat took us to the train and ordered us to go to Kremnička; they gathered Jews in Kremnička and, everybody knows this now, they shot them once they had gathered a certain number. This is how they murdered my grandmother Julie Pauncová Riedlová, the doctor’s wife. So that was our order, we had to board the train and the gendarme gave the paper to someone on the train. There were some German soldiers on the train, going on vacation from the front, and someone – not them – someone, though I cannot know who exactly, was supposed to turn us in for further procedures in Kremnička. The soldiers were merry and liked us, and they threw me in the air.”