Pater Jozef Regec

“A friend of mine with whom I had been going to school had an elder brother, Smrek, and he was involved in the uprising as a commander, and he persuaded us to join the uprising. As the Germans were pushing towards Kežmarok and Poland, the partisans gathered strength and pushed them all the way toward Poprad up the mountains and to Žilina, but there they received German reinforcements and they scattered us. We thus had to leave everything as it was and escape to the mountains and forests above Banská Bystrica, which are called Old Mountains. A large camp was made there in the mountains. We were young and skilful and we were going to lay mines under brides and so on, but not by ourselves, but we were helping the older partisans who knew how to do it. But there was a traitor among us, and he disclosed our hiding place.”

“We thus moved to Auschwitz to work. We were building barracks there, and two months later they moved in the Jews and they took us to Dachau. I had been accepted as a car repairman, and I was thus repairing doors, and whatever was needed; I was a young boy.”