Pavel Friedmann

"And so did their brother, who set out on the journey in 1940. And unfortunately, his journey lasted four years. He got to Palestine in 1944...a book was published in Slovakia about his case, even two books. The second one was written ten years ago, it was written by Rihák. And the first one published in Slovak on this topic was written by Professor Nižňanský. So mom and her sister found themselves back in Trebišov. Sandra: Here you can perhaps tell briefly what the books were called and the story of the brother who went for four years. Paul: Yes. I also have a photo... of books. The second book in Slovak, written by Rihák, was simply called "Pentcho", that was the name of the ship that left Bratislava, from the port of Bratislava. The original plan was that they would follow the Danube to the Black Sea and there transfer to a larger ship suitable for the journey across the Mediterranean to Palestine. But they stayed for four months on the Danube... the ship that was waiting for them left. As a result, they were forced to continue with the ship with which they had set out from the port of Bratislava. Of course the ship had great trouble along the way, and at last it came to pass that they had to land on an island, without food or drink for ten days. To this day, the island is not populated at all. Fortunately, some pilot of the Italian crew spotted them and thus they were saved. Then they got to Italy... Fera Monti, that's what it was called, that's what the military base was called, Fera Monti, and after four years they got to Palestine. So the trek of my mother's brother, whose name was Herman Wald, began in 1940, and he only reached Palestine in 1944."

"Regarding that school, I would also like to add an interesting fact about how a person's destiny is actually guided. The Jewish children were no longer there, because they were deported with their parents in 1942. The Lord God wanted and German soldiers began to live there, and above their heads were those 15 souls...in the attic. So we can only imagine how those people breathed and existed there, when the German soldiers returned to that Jewish school every evening and spent the night, and then left every morning. There was one commander among them who was very suspicious of what was going on in that attic. And he asked Mr. Heriban, who was there as a former janitor... after all, we had to deal with the heating, with the water supply... which I know everything, actually everything that belongs to the operation of the school, the former school. So he was present there. And when the German commander asked him for a ladder, Mr. Heriban pretended that he didn't have such a high ladder at the moment, but that he would try to secure one in the near future. It happened about three times that the commander asked for a ladder to go up to the attic to see what was actually there. Apparently those people weren't always completely silent, that's just how I imagine it. But the third time, when the commander asked for the ladder and Mr. Heriban said again and again: "I haven't found such a long ladder yet," the German said: "Listen, in the evening when we return and the ladder is not here, we will go together to the attic and you will stay there," and he did so with his hand, as if across his neck. So I don't know if he thought that he would be hanged there, or that... fortunately the commander of German origin did not return, he died... he was shot down. But those Germans continued to stay there for several months, and somehow those fifteen...souls...somehow survived."

"Even before that, in May 1944, the Germans were already looking for some way to make the Slovak state...to be weaker than it actually is, and they decided together with the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak State that they would deport the Jews. So the Jews from eastern Slovakia were forcibly pushed to the west. And Jews from western Slovakia, to the east. Of course, when a person is away from home, he cannot be as efficient or active as if he were at home and operating in the best conditions. As a result, the father, as he continues to work in the Vranov pharmacy...his sister Bela and their mother Róza, are pushed to the west. Their new port is near the town of Hlohovec. There is... there are some fields, south of the town, about eleven kilometers, where they were drying tobacco leaves. My grandmother Róza and my aunt Bela ended up there. Meanwhile, the Slovak National Uprising is already being prepared and it is already known that something...that something will happen. And thus, Aunt Bela, father's sister, decided to at least do something with herself, if not...with her mother. She found some acquaintance with the former janitor of the Jewish school in Hlohovec...a school that was no longer in operation because the Jews were transported away in 1942 and the school was empty. It was Mr. Jozef Heriban, who worked as a janitor in this Jewish school for many years. Then it turned out later, according to what aunt Bela told us, that it was actually his initiative to save the people who were willing to go to that school with him. It turned out that he, with his initiative, was willing to prepare in the attic of the former Jewish school, some shelter, some refuge for people who are willing to save themselves. Bela...aunt Bela decided that she would go with Mr. Heriban, Jozef Heriban...but mom Róza didn't want to go anywhere, so she actually stayed there. And it is likely that she was deported from this city. Because we know clearly when aunt Bela went to that Jewish school, and when they took the people who worked in that field with that tobacco leaf."

"A year later, he returned to Slovakia. He worked for two years in Košice and then another eleven years in Vranov, Vranov nad Topľou, until he was actually deported. Sandra: When was he born? Paul: 1904. Sandra: 1904. Pavol: And he was deported in October, October 19, 1944. Which means at the age of 40, still single...he was deported. So I would say, I am sorry to this day, because my father received an exemption from the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak State at the time, because doctors and pharmacists, nurses and some other category...received an exemption during the Second World War, that they were not deported. But over time, when the Slovak National Uprising was already being prepared in Slovakia, the Germans somehow caught on and literally occupied eastern Slovakia, which had been relatively peaceful until then. And the father was invited to Prešov... in such a naive way, the father thought that they were actually renewing his exemption, which he had only received twice, and thus he could continue his professional work. So they asked him to come to a certain place in Prešov. They asked him to bring all the documents with him...and of course the father did. And so it turned out... when he arrived at that certain office, they demanded his papers and they simply burned them. And they said, that: "Mr. Friedmann, here. Which means that on this occasion, the father actually went to the left and not to the right, and there was already a transport preparing to go, and after a few hours the transport left directly for Germany. The father went to the concentration camp, from there, from Prešov, directly to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, on the territory of Germany. That was about a day and a half after he was summoned to Prešov, that is, on October 19, he was summoned to Prešov and about a day and a half later, he already found himself in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, on the territory of Germany. And that actually started my father's era...I would say, during the Second World War. "

“Later, after we had already been in Israel for some time I asked aunt Bella if she wanted us to do something for Mr. Heriban. At that time I knew that there was Katarína Ferancová, which I had not know before. I explained to aunt Bella that there was so-called Righteous Among the Nations in Israel, and that perhaps now it would be a suitable opportunity to do something for Mr. Heriban. Aunt Bella somehow considered it, but no activity took place until my mom decided that she would write in aunt Bella's name about aunt Bella's experiences and about how she had been saved. My mom wrote it, I printed it and we sent it to Yad Vashem. Some gentleman from Yad Vashem then came to us and he spoke to mom - aunt Bella was no longer alive at that time - and the testimony given by my mother was thus based on facts which she knew from aunt Bella and partly from my father as well. Yad Vashem probably verified it because there were three other people who were still alive in Israel and who had been saved together with aunt Bella in that attic. Yad Vashem somehow found some other documents and other testimonies.”

“My father’s dream that I would become a pharmacist and that we would have our own private pharmacy has not come true. Two years after our arrival I was drafted to do the compulsory military service, and therefore I was not able to take the secondary school leaving exams. Our departure from Czechoslovakia, when I was nearly seventeen , was bad timing. I don’t even remember it because back there I was a student in the eleventh grade and I had one year to go to graduate from secondary school and when I arrived here I needed one year to learn the new language. Meanwhile I already turned eighteen. When I was eighteen and a half, I was summoned to prepare for the compulsory military service. So I was drafted and I served the compulsory three years in the army.”

“My father and mother have both perceived it for all those years after the end of the Second World War, even though a new life started for them. They married on 1st July 1947 and a new era in Czechoslovakia started and people felt more free. My father worked as a pharmacist, so in a certain way the life became normal and relatively pleasant. But as I mentioned a while ago, it was not possible to ignore the fact that there have been victims in my mother's family and my father's family as well, people who had not returned from concentration camps. I imagine what they felt when they remembered them on a given day every year. Since they knew when their family members had been deported and therefore they observed a day of remembrance for them every year, in church and at home, remembering that their brother, sister, mother, father, lost their lives so tragically in the Polish territory, in gas chambers. I think that for them it was some basis that it was still present in the background, that Czechoslovakia could not be a safe future for people of Jewish descent who have lost their siblings just for being of Jewish descent. This is one reason why they decided to relocate, and the second is because my mother had two brothers and two sisters here in Israel.”

“We were happy. But this is true only about my generation, about my sister and me. As children in Malčice back then, we did not know anything about what had happened during and before the war. We had no clue because our parents did not speak openly about it and when I overheard something, it was only when father and mother privately remembered some events from the period of the war or before. Gradually I somehow became able to imagine what the history of my parents and grandparents was like, but nobody had ever told me about it. Only in Israel, when we were already living here during the first years. Before leaving for Israel I knew the family history only very, very briefly because my parents never spoke about it openly in front of us children, and when I overheard something it was only when mother and father spoke about it and of course when aunt Bella spoke about it. She often came to visit us in Malčice, although she had her own apartment in Vranov nad Topľou; she lived there but she was not married and she did not have a family and so she was actually making rounds.”