"You know, we were in Bulgaria in the sixty-eighth. I remember going to the sink in the morning, we lived in such wooden huts. One lady went opposite and said that we were occupied by the Russians, and it seemed to me that she was dreaming. But it was a fact and we could not return home. So we were actually on account, I don't know whom... a week longer because we were there by train. Even those who were by plane, we just had to stay there. My husband was inclined to go out in Belgrade like many people. But I had parents there. If I took that Katka (daughter, author's note) away, they would die. But besides, I'm saying that perhaps the only thing I'm convinced I did well is that I didn't emigrate. I wouldn't be able to get married, although I don't suffer from greatness or anything, but I know ... I know someone who went to Zurich, was already a trained doctor, was a trained engineer-specialist in medical devices, but had to start all over again and couldn't go to the swimming pool his bosses went to. I wouldn't swallow this. I don't know if it is with my ideological background. Of course, my husband wanted to go to Israel. Firstly, the climate is not for me. Although I would have made a living with my russian language abroad at that time, because at that time it was different. No, I told him, 'You know, you can't ski there, I don't go there.' That Hermon is there. So I say, well, Hermon is not Chopok. I am not conservative, I somehow felt good in Slovakia."
"The Russians conquered it when they got through the Hron, so it was only a short distance away. We used to walk. So we came there, there were also a lot of Gypsies, and my mother said that the Gypsies ran away and shouted: “Some Jews are going home.” Mom came out at the gate and as she saw us, she fainted, fell, just like that ... Well, the first thing she asked was where grandmother was. So it was terrible for me, terrible, terrible. We stayed there for a while. That sister-in-law, Jolana, had two sons, one was still small. Her husband, who came from there, from the village, so he was like a political prisoner in prison. And his father's brother was also a political prisoner in Mauthausen.”
"My father just contacted, we were ready, the plan was to go to the border with Hungary and cross the green border there, to go by train - I don't know what the pre-frontier city was - to cross the green border and stay there with someone in Lučenec who will give us fake papers. We really went to that limit. We only had one big suitcase that my father carried, such a big paper suitcase, you know what they used to be. And I was wearing a mattress dress, which was all buttoned up, which my father had poured out of gold and painted black. Mom got out and my parents didn't know that the train was only there for a minute, so the train moved. And my father jumped out of that train with me in his arms and with the suitcase in his other hand, and we found ourselves like a train, and there were rails and we were in this part, we were lying, my father didn't lose his temper until the train passed. Then we went, it was such a moonlit night, dogs were quite barking. We were led by a cowboy, as they said. That is, cowboy, that is, the cowherd. He got the money from the clutch, of course, but he also wanted a bottle of plum brandy. He told us he would go ahead, and when he saw someone, he would lie down. But he drank the plum brandy and was falling. And we follow him. You know, like a kid - this stuck in my mind. Then one of our friends, Mr. Barňák, said that he would accompany us to the hungarian border. He fell into a fox trap again, his leg caught. Even though my father's suitcase fell on the border, at the highway, it was still possible to listen in Germany. We happily came to the family, they gave us the documents, but they stole everything from me, except my clothes. I was wearing them. And my mom was most afraid of the photo. Could you discuss with them? We couldn't. Because back then, people were catching on those borders."
Mária Weissová (as single Kovalová) was born as the only daughter to secular Jewish parents in Košice on September 18, 1933. From 1938 she lived in Zvolen, where her father opened a dental clinic. After starting the aryanization of jewish enterprises in 1940, he chose the aryanist and continued to work for him. Before the deportations that began in the spring of 1942, the family was initially protected by an exception, but they were listed in September. They managed to escape across the green border to hungarian territory in Lučenec, where they received equipped documents from Košice and continued to Budapest, where several relatives lived. Here Mária attended a Jewish Orthodox school. In 1943, her father was deported to present-day Serbia as part of Jewish labor units. Grandparents also came to Budapest at the end of the year, because her grandfather got through surgery there, after which he died. Grandmother stayed in Budapest with Mária and her mother. In preparation for the deportations, in June 1944, all the Jews of Budapest were en masse rehoused to the ghetto and to the houses marked with a yellow star. During the allied bombing of strategic targets in the city, launched in July, they hid in a cellar, and their apartment was destroyed by a neighboring house. After the start of deportations by the Arrow Crosses in October, Mária‘s mother was taken away, but she managed to escape and got to relatives with fake papers, in Šarovce. Mária and her grandmother were saved before Nyilašov raids and rage by a neighbor-carpenter, whose son took them to the town Hatvan, where they survived the fighting until his release at the end of November. A few days later, a grandmother, who was an orthodox Jew, died in a field hospital and Mária still does not know where she is buried. Over the doctor, she sent a message to Budapest, which reached her father. It was not until the end of March that the front moved beyond the river Hron and they could cross to Šarovce for their mother. In the summer they moved to Bratislava, where their father opened a dental clinic and Mária entered an eight-year grammar school. Both, father and mother were passionate communists and Mária became a candidate of the Communist party as soon as she turned eighteen in 1951. After graduating in 1953, she began studying slovak and russian at Comenius University in Bratislava, and during her studies she married and gave birth to a daughter. From february 1958 she worked as an assistant at the Department of languages. She was critical of the allied invasion in August 1968 and was expelled from the party after inspections in 1970, but she was able to stay at the university and work there until retirement. She continued as a translator and teacher of slovak. Through her daughter, she returned to Jewish traditions to which she was not led by her parents.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
