“In the village we lived very well. Nobody minded us, we lived there like natives. Then some young boys returned from a stay in Germany. They had learned Nazism and anti-Semitism there, and began persecuting us. There were only a few of them, a handful who could speak German. They entered our shop. One of them had a revolver and wanted to shoot my brother. My brother hid behind the door and locked himself in, they shot a hole through our door, but nothing really happened. I was at home at the time, and I ran to Krčova (the neighbouring village). There was a police station, and I reported the incident, that we had been attacked, but they told me: ´Go home, we cannot do anything about it. Just protect yourself as you can.´” Interviewer: “They were Hungarian policemen?” – “Yes, they were Hungarians.” Interviewer: “And after the region was taken over by Hungary, you then became a Hungarian citizen, right? And then as a Hungarian citizen you got drafted to the army – they didn’t mind that you were Jewish?” – “I was drafted to the Hungarian army. I was there for one year.” Interviewer: “You went through training and then you served somewhere with the infantry?” – “At first I served with the mountain troops, it was in Carpathian Ruthenia. There were the Ruthenians and they didn’t want, or could not adapt to the Hungarians. Then a new law was passed, and all of us who had been living there were transported from Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary. They forced us to stay with them. My mom was a Hungarian. She was Jewish, but she was born near Uzhhorod and she could speak Hungarian well. I also knew Hungarian, and when I was then in the army adapted to it, there was nothing else to do, anyway. They wanted to send me to an officers’ school, but requested that I change my name. They presented me various names to choose from, but I refused: ´I was born with this name and I will keep it.´ I was thus dismissed and transferred to the Hussar cavalry regiment. I served there. The anti-Jewish law was then passed, and we were then transferred to a labour camp. They took our rifles and gave us spades and pickaxes instead. We began working in this internment camp. At first they took us to Poland, then to Ukraine, they simply always sent us where they needed us.”
“I had prayer straps and when they caught me, they cut them to pieces. This made me very angry. I told them, ´Leave it, these are my religious objects!´ He turned to me, ´How much gold do you have in there, how many dollars? You are a spy!´ It was right at the border, and they had a big bathtub there. I felt fit, and I grabbed one of the soldiers and slammed him right into that bathtub. I’d better not even tell you what happened then. He was all wet, guards then came, grabbed me… They beat me, but the revenge was mine. Then they laid me on the straw on the ground, they carried me into that cell like a corpse, I was beaten, terribly beaten.” Interviewer: “And this was done by the soldiers right in the customs office? Not by the StB policemen?” – “No, they were customs officers. They caught me right there, and because we were drunk, each of us walked away a different way. I got to the border zone in Petržalka. I simply lost my way.”
“When the commander came, he began shouting: ´Jews, what a fine time you’re having here! We’re fighting and you seem to have a good time!´ He stopped the first person he saw, he had a hat on his head. That person was my brother. They took him and they simply hanged him on the first tree. I tried to stop them. I went there, ´Leave him, I’ll go in his place, he has a family.´ He was thirty, and I was twenty years old… They told me: ´You’re still young, you’ll keep working till you peg out!´ They knocked me down to the snow, and when I came to myself and got up, my brother had already been hanged. There was terrible commotion, because we were all wearing hats, but for that commander it was enough to revenge himself just on one person. We buried him and everything continued. In another place, it was in a different camp, my other brother... The German army came there, there were Hungarians among them, and they said: ´Guys, who wants to go home, to work near home?´ They needed two thousand people to apply. My brother went there and he applied. There was another man from the village who told him: ´Abraham, what are you doing? Don’t apply, you don’t know what will happen with us. Do you know what they intend to do, what they’ll do with you?´ Brother replied: ´What does it matter, I have a wife and children. At that place, I will be closer to them, perhaps I’ll escape and get home.´ They drove them a couple of kilometres away to the forest. The two thousand people who were digging trenches there had to undress. When they were almost done in the evening, German commandos with rifles and cannons were ready behind them. As soon as they undressed, they shot them to death. Only one man remained alive. They didn’t manage to cover the hole completely with bodies; he was wounded, but stayed alive. It was night, and he dug himself out of the hole and walked away. He saw some light and there were people there who saved him. They took him to hospital. He returned after the war. He survived the war, all the others had been shot. It happened in Sobrance. He was about twenty-five, a young boy, but his hair was white like an old man’s… He was talking about what had happened there, but he got crazy because of that and he died. He was the only one to talk about the group of people who had been shot there.”
“I was in Bratislava for a few days and then they summoned me to court. Tens of protocols were written for me, and they simply made a spy of me. I couldn’t defend myself, they assigned me an ex offo advocate. He called me and asked me: ´What have you done?´ I replied: ´Nothing.´ - ´What do you mean, nothing? You got a death sentence here, so you must have done something!´”
“I was still relatively young, twenty-seven years old. I was fit, and after the war, girls were crazy about me. They came emaciated, nearly without clothing… Well, I could choose, and there were girls to choose from, when I was going to visit them in the poorhouse. I was bringing them some food, I handed out almost everything that I earned. But I still couldn’t forget it… I will marry, then I will divorce, I will feel even worse… I couldn’t forget this terrible tragedy and therefore I remained alone. Then I moved to Prague, not many people stayed in Michalovce, the Jews were fleeing to the west. When I was in Prague, I got to know one family and I went to the bureau to apply for immigration to Israel. Everyone had to submit an application. I was already working in geological prospecting. Before that I had been working in a foundry in Kolben Daněk. We went to the embassy and they asked me some questions. They asked me about my job. I replied that I worked in geological prospecting, specializing in drilling. They said it was a wonderful and great job, and where would I wish to go? And they refused to grant me the visa. Thus I remained alone all the time.”
“When they imprisoned me I requested, ´Take me to a doctor!´ I was sick, I didn’t want to eat. But the wardens, Pichl (?), the head warden, opened the door and told me, ´You will scoff it!´ I said, ´I can’t , I’m sick.´ They grabbed me, they had some lentils, I can’t even look at lentils since that time, and they tore this (?) part here, and when the mash fell to the floor, they took this dirty food and tried to stuff it into my mouth with a spoon. It was terrible, because I was bleeding. It was a strong blow, and I couldn’t open my mouth. When they saw that I really couldn’t, they left me there and went away. I was sitting on the floor and I thought, ´There’s nothing I can do.´ Then I remembered an accident with one guy that had happened before. His mouth was completely twisted, and I thought that I didn’t want to live like that, but what was I to do? I found some long nail there, and I swallowed it, thinking that something urgent would happen to me, and they would take me to a hospital.”
“They sent me to Jáchymov. I was working in Jáchymov, but I was still waiting for my appeal.” Interviewer: “You were thus not even sentenced, and you were already in the labour camp in Jáchymov?” – “I was not sentenced yet, but I had to work. In Jáchymov they assigned me to work in mine nr. 12. That was the worst mine, that’s where I was. They put me into a cell with some murderer, who had a life sentence and who had already served several years there. He had murdered his wife. His surname was Čáp, I’ll never forget that name, he came somewhere from Pilsen. I was put into a cell with him. Naturally, I had to obey him, because he was my superior. When they were blasting the rock in the mine, he called me and said: ´Sasha, (he called me Sasha), go there and bring that stuff here.´ They were just about to start the explosions, and he sent me to bring the tools from the mine where explosives were just about to go off. I fell to the ground after the blast. I was poisoned by the gas, but I survived. He asks me: ´What were you doing there?´ I replied: ´Why, you ordered me to go there!´ I was partially suffocated, and I walked to the accommodation barracks. I was checked, but I was still suffocating. I couldn’t stand it, in the evening I went to the lavatory, well, there were no lavatories, but one bucket for peeing and one for… you did it in front of the barrack. In the watchtowers there were snipers, but I came out of the barrack nevertheless, because I couldn’t breathe. A cook from the night shift just came out from the canteen. He knew me, he was also from Slovakia and we even stayed in the same room. He told me: ´Alex, don’t go there, they’ll shoot you!´ They were already aiming at me, thinking I was walking towards the wire fence. And the cook shouted at the guard not to shoot, because I was ill. He ran to me, grabbed me and took me to the first-aid room.”
Alexander Feuerstein was born June 20, 1918 in the eastern Slovakian village of Koromľa. He grew up as the seventh (the youngest) child in a family of a Jewish tradesman and farmer. Alexander attended grammar school in nearby Uzhhorod. After the Munich Treaty, the southern part of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied by the Hungarian army. Due to his race, Alexander was dismissed from school in the last year of his studies and he had to join the Hungarian army. He benefited from his excellent command of Hungarian. He served in the border patrol and later in the cavalry. Along with the rise of anti-Semitic tendencies, soldiers of Jewish origin were dismissed from the army and detained in so-called work units. Their members were doing slave labour in inhuman conditions for the German or Hungarian army in the rear of combat operations. Alexander‘s two brothers, who were detained in the same work unit, were murdered. The rest of his family perished in Nazi extermination camps. Alexander thus was completely alone when the war ended. After he recuperated, he settled in Michalovce in eastern Slovakia. There he worked as a shop assistant. One day soon after the communist regime came to power, Alexander, who was returning from a party, lost his way in the Petržalka neighbourhood and accidentally wandered into the border zone. He was arrested by the border patrol and accused of espionage. The death penalty was impending, but eventually he got away with a two-year sentence, which he spent mostly in the labour camps in Jáchymov. Following his release, he had to take a job in heavy industry. He settled in Prague and worked in a foundry in the ČKD factory. After some time, he managed to find an easier job in geological prospecting. He unsuccessfully tried to emigrate to Israel. His wish to visit the Holy Land came true only in 2006 thanks to the Prague Jewish Community. This fulfillment of his lifelong dream, albeit in an advanced age, partly helped him to overcome the war traumas, and at the age of 89 he married a member of the Prague Jewish Community who had been taking care of him.
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!
