David Sivor

* 1934

  • “It was time, when we were already afraid. In 1941 the deportations began and in 1942 I was in Liptovský Mikuláš with my mom, when our good friend, a police procurator in Bratislava, telephoned to my mom. He lived next to our flat on Škovránková Street. He called my mom to run away, since we were on the list to be transported on the next day. And yet that day we left Mikuláš and returned to Bratislava. The pity was that my uncle and my cousin didn´t want to leave the hotel. They stayed there, Germans took them, deported to Sobibor, and they never returned after the war.”

  • “When the immigration to Israel began after the war, my parents wanted to go, but my grandma was very old and they didn´t want to leave her alone. Therefore they couldn´t come in the beginnings of 1949, and subsequently the borders were closed, thus they were unable to travel anymore. I left with a group of 44 young people from Bratislava station on February 14, 1949. We went to Vienna, where we slept over in a Jewish community camp and we continued to Genoa, where we also stayed for one night. From Genoa we sailed on a smaller ship to Israel. This ship belonged to English military fleet and was called Medex. There were 250 of us onboard. The parents were afraid I would have nothing to eat and thus they packed some goosey meat for me. I hanged it on a little string. It was a horrible journey, everybody threw up, but I was having bites of my goosey meat. When we arrived in Haifa on February 23, I just remember us singing Hatikvah, a national anthem of Israel, when being up onboard. We were all very excited.”

  • “On my 10th birthday in July 1944, we were already in hiding, but my parents bought me a Swiss watch Doxa. This! This is the watch that I got. It is working until now. On a day, when my mom went to work with fake papers, her watch was broken. I told her to take my watch. She took it to the hospital and didn´t return it as she went from there directly to – Patrónka and Theresienstadt, also with my watch. After the war on May 8, 1945, the Theresienstadt was liberated. She came back home around May 20 and she returned me my watch. So this watch went through a very long and interesting journey. It is a very important keepsake for me.”

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Communism seemed the same as Nazism, during which we suffered greatly

David Sivor in 1949
David Sivor in 1949
zdroj: David Sivor

David Sivor was born on July 28, 1934 in Bratislava into a Jewish family. His grandfather owned a hardware store with a workshop in Bratislava, where also David´s father worked. A family from his mother´s side owned the hotel Kriváň in former Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš. In 1941 they lost their whole property as well as their flat in Bratislava, which was seized by an aryaniser. They moved to a rented accommodation in Koliba to some Byelorussian. However, as time passed, this place stopped to be safe and in the end, David´s mother, grandmother and uncle were deported to concentration camp in Theresienstadt. Other family members ended up in camps Sobibor and Auschwitz. David and his father waited to see the end of the war in a Bratislava hideout, and luckily the family from Theresienstadt camp survived and returned home. In 1949 David Sivor left to Israel with a group of other Jewish girls and boys with the intention of working in kibbutz. His parents and his brother managed to arrive in Israel yet in 1964. Besides his job, David Sivor focused on sports and in 1976 he began working as a professional swimming coach in Jerusalem.