Pavel Eli Vago

“We were walking down with our backpacks, weak and freezing, hungry and thirsty, spotting a small house. We didn’t know, where we were, that it was a little village Hronček. We knocked on the door and a girl opened to us. She has still been alive, her name is Valika Vaculčiaková. I remember that her mom made tea for our whole group and one cannot even express what was it like to drink that tea back then. Unbelievable feeling. Mr. Vaculčiak then told us: ‘Listen, you are a very big group and we are also afraid we could be taken over by Germans. Therefore, I am very sorry, but you cannot stay here. However, I might be able to find a cabin in the woods, where you could hide.’ We didn’t have any other possibility, so we followed him. It was only few kilometers and suddenly we saw the cabin. The door was open and no one was in there. There was a wooden plank bed, what felt like Hilton Hotel back then, after all those nights we slept freezing under the open sky.”

“At Christmas Eve of 1944, suddenly a big Slovak came, wearing white canvas clothes and black hat, holding a hatchet stick in his hands. He started to scream: ‘Crush him! Crush him!’ I remember I said: ‘Dad, it is the end! Now is the end of all!’ He was screaming at me: ‘I am looking for Jews!’ And he found us, the whole bunker. He had a big backpack, which he dragged behind. We had such a little table, so he emptied the backpack onto the little table, where ended up all kinds of treats and bread. Things we hadn’t seen for months. We were looking at each other, not knowing what was happening. He continued: ‘I come from Čierny Balog and I came to welcome the Jews!’ Well, it was like a miracle from heaven to us. Back then it was the first time I heard what Čierny Balog was.”