Mária Blechová

* 1951

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  • „On (starý otec) asi bol obchodník, neviem o ňom veľa, bolo to také tabu to rozprávanie tom čo bolo. Naozaj, toto hovorím úprimne. Tá rodina existuje určite z toho prvého manželstva, buď v Kanade alebo v Amerike. Tam bolo päť detí, dievčat, takže je to rozvetvené, ale nič o nich neviem. .... Mal židovské korene, ale vôbec o tom nič nevieme. A práve to má dosť hnevá, viete ako ide život, ja tiež mám veľa vecí za sebou a plno práce, ale chcem sa tomu teraz venovať, zistiť odkiaľ vlastne bol.“

  • "As a child, I used to go (to take photos) with my father. I have the most beautiful memories of it. Because there were five of us, I was among the youngest. The thing is, I admired him terribly, and I probably liked that job. Because even now that I'm taking photos, I might be able to do quite well. I was in the car with him, because he would go around those villages, photographing holidays, funerals, confirmations. I didn't miss a single one, because I liked him. And I enjoyed it."

  • "That (company) was founded by that German. After a while we realized that we were more or less doing it for him. He got rich, maybe, or had money, and we were just learning. Of course, we had a little more money than ordinary people had back then. But we didn't have much, because a lot of that money was left in Hamburg. But I don't regret it at all, I learned a lot, on my own back, with my own mind, with my own hands."

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    Bratislava, 24.04.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:49:05
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th century
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My birth name Kaufmann fills me with pride, even though I no longer have contact with the Jewish branch of my family

Mária Blechová during eyd recording
Mária Blechová during eyd recording
photo: Photo by Post Bellum SK

Mária Blechová, née Kaufmannová, was born on April 10, 1951 in Senica nad Myjavou. Both parents – mother Agneša Horňáková and father William Kaufmann – came from Jablonica. Grandfather Leopold Kaufmann is a descendant of a family of Jewish merchants who worked in Vienna. There he met his grandmother Helena, who served the Kaufmann family, and after their marriage they moved to Jablonica. They had two sons together, Aladár and Viliam; Leopold died when they were still young. Grandmother then took a midwife course and went around the villages as a midwife. Grandfather on her mother’s side, Štefan Horňák, went to America to work. Her mother came from a peasant family of nine children. Mária Blechová has four siblings. They were all baptized and raised in the Catholic faith. From Jablonica, the family moved to Senica, where his father bought a house and set up a photography studio. As a child, Mária often accompanied her father when he went to take photos. Her father fought in the Slovak National Uprising, and at the Tri Duby airport they fought in the trenches. He returned home from the front with poor health. He died in 1960. Her mother, a trained seamstress, also took photographs and worked in the studio. Even after the studio was nationalized in 1948 and transferred to municipal services. Mária left home when she was 14 to her aunt in Bratislava, where she studied at elementary school for another six months. She then studied at the Slovnafta vocational school in chemistry, where she met her husband Miloš Blech. After graduating from school in 1969, she married and got a job in the Slovnafta laboratory. In 1970, her daughter Miroslava was born, and five years later, her son Juraj. She worked at Slovnaft for three years and then for 14 years at the Institute of Petroleum and Hydrocarbon Gases. In 1981, she was in a Western country for the first time – in Hamburg at the invitation of acquaintances who later became business partners. In 1990, she and her husband founded a company as a subsidiary of a German company for the sale of laboratory equipment. In 1997, she and her German partner broke up and Mária founded a new company, Ilabo, together with her daughter. Her husband died in 2021 and she had to close the company after the Covid pandemic. Today, she helps her son in his business and also works as a Pilates instructor, which she has been doing since the 1990s.