Martin Hagara

* 1934

  • “Then on the Day after Christmas, on December 26, 1950, they took us from Nováky to Prievidza. There we were picked up by State Security members, who drove us to Nitra. There we were investigated. I didn't have permission for walks. We had night interrogations. Spent time in corrections. I was at the cell number 23 and the 24 was the correction. It was a cell without windows, without bed or blanked, just the concrete. The interrogations were led every day. Sometimes the interrogation took even 24 hours. No food, no sleep, nothing. There I stood until I fainted.”

  • “Well, when the employer saw what I had in my report, he told me, he wanted to hire me. I told him though, that I had to warn him of one thing – that within the Prievidza district I had been marked as one of the greatest counter-revolutionaries. I didn't want them to get into some trouble. But he told me: 'Don't worry about that, Mr. Hagara. You know what kind of colleagues will you have? There will be priests, religious people, doctors, lawyers; all of those being affected by normalization.' And so we were running on that ramp with wheelbarrows and concrete. Doctor here, professor there... Simply, elegant company.”

  • “Then he had a meeting here in Prievidza [Vladimír Mečiar, note. ed.]. I couldn't miss it. I know how the studies used to be completed back in the past. You know, Mečiar studied law during the normalization era. And the law was under the management of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It was completely impossible to get to the Faculty of Law, if a person or his relatives had even the smallest possible scratch. He was a dismissed party member suddenly studying the law externally? And he even said it was secret? Is that possible to do external studies in secret? No, that is bullshit.” “So you didn't trust the well-known file named 'Doctor', that he didn't inform?” “Exactly, he was an informer. They came to me as well and offered me that I could complete my study. So he also had to do something to deserve to be there. And at that meeting I raised my hand and said: 'Mr. Mečiar, I would really be interested, how were you, a dismissed party member, allowed to study at the Faculty of Law. Because I was also dismissed and also being lured by the State Security to sign cooperation. So how was it with you?' And that was the time when his security guards led me out from the meeting. You ŠtB bastard!”

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„The truth always remains the truth; it can never be deformed, nor denied.“

Martin Hagara - after returning from prison (1952)
Martin Hagara - after returning from prison (1952)
zdroj: z archívu pamätníka

Martin Hagara was born on September 17th, 1934, and comes from a family of six children. He grew up in Nováky. His father Michal Hagara led a shoe production business, and his mother, Mária Hagarová, née Čikkelová, was a housewife. Since his early childhood, Martin inclined towards the ideas of Scouting. After the communist takeover and banning of all the scout organizations, together with his friends, he founded an illegal scout organization named „Zlatý Orol“ (Golden Eagle). He was in charge of its branch in Nováky. During Christmas of 1950, he was arrested and after an extensive investigation, as a juvenile, he along with the other members sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment for high treason. At first, he was in remand centre in Nitra and Bratislava, then he served his sentence in juvenile prison in Hlohovec, and after he turned 18, he was moved to Leopoldov prison.  In 1952, he was released. During the whole period of communist rule, he was politically persecuted. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he was engaged in the Christian-Democratic Movement, worked as a director of District Labor Office in Prievidza, and later as a general director of the National Labor Office. He was active in Confederation of Political Prisoners of Slovakia and to this day, he is the head of Prievidza‘s branch of an organization called Political Prisoners - Union of Anti-Communist Resistance. Since 1994, he lives as a pensioner together with his wife Vlasta Hagarová, née Švarcová, in Bojnice.