Mary Hlinka Seewald

“Our village was in a valley, so there were mountains on both sides. But when the front approached us, bullets starting whizzing quite close by, sometimes even hitting the rooftops or the mountains on the other side. One day – we lived in the middle of the town – we went to hide in its upper section, which was surrounded by two large cliffs, which we reckoned would protect us from the bullets. I remember that I had socks, which I had bought for money earned by picking blueberries. That was a big thing for us, picking blueberries; Mum would take them to town and buy something for them. So I had socks, which were an item of big value to me, and that was the only thing I was worried about – that I wouldn’t forget to take them with me to the shelter. On the way to the hills, we ran to hide in the cellar of one of our neighbours.”

“It must have been January. Maybe midway through it, or even at the start of the month. My uncle took us on a cart to Stará Ľubovna, or maybe even to Prešov, someplace where they had a train station. We rode by train through Czechoslovakia, as it was at the time, to Germany. We travelled through devastated areas, we saw ruined houses along the track, even a bridge that the train slowly traversed, and we saw how everything was bombed to bits. It was daunting, and we asked: ‘Will we even get there?’ I can imagine that my mum, who had never travelled before – neither had we, but then we were children – she was more aware of what to worry about. Then we arrived to the place where a ship took us to England. We stayed in a hotel in England for about two days, until the ship we were to board arrived. We travelled on the Queen Elizabeth. Our cabin was all the way down on the lowest deck. We travelled together with one other Slovak family, whom we shared our cabin with; they had two boys and a girl. The ship with its lifts and restaurants was a really exciting place for us small-town children who only ever saw carts and carriages before. We children didn’t behave very well to the lifts, because we kept taking them up and down, we had to explore everything – in some parts of the ship there was dancing, music, the restaurants had food. We’d go to have our meals there, but we didn’t speak English, of course. We could only count to ten. So ‘what’ll we eat?’ We’d look round, see what other people had on their plates, and point at what we recognised. People there were very kind, helpful. It was an experience. A wonderful one. [Q: Did you get seasick?] No. But Mum did. She hardly left her room. I think that when she arrived in the US, she weighed just a bit over 40 kilos.”