Ľubomír Boďa

* 1932

  • “Well, many times at the political trainings the lecturers were quite funny. You know, they lectured us, the university graduates. There were app. 30 percent of men in the company being dismissed from universities and further 30 percent of priests or theology students, so simply, majority of us were highly educated people. So, the primitive commanders lectured us, or better, if they were able to read, they read the lectures on Marxism and re-education. Many times happened, that they asked some of us to lead the lecture instead. Vlado Kolník often did the reading; he went through the paper and commented it, adjusting the text to our conditions.”

  • “Then the Hungarians came. I imagined them to have the hussar’s feathers on their hats with bayonets on their guns. They behaved very crudely what was rough and nasty. Then they arrested us for a week in granary, about 400 Slovaks from the whole region. We had to walk in between the bayonets to use the toilets, what I recall quite well. We slept on the straw; the parents brought some warm clothes for their kids, so we could endure.”

  • “It was such a strong impression; we were running on the streets and screaming: ‘Crush him!’ I remember that it was really powerful experience – common and social, similarly like before the Uprising. When the Uprising broke out, we were also together screaming on the streets, cheering and greeting each other: ‘Crush him!’”

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    Zvolen , 18.11.2017

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The smile on my face has frozen for the rest of my life

In youth
In youth
photo: archív pamätníka

Ľubomír Boďa was born on May 16, 1932 in the village of Medvecké, what was former named as Bimbula. Under the oppression of Hungarian government, after the Vienna Award in 1938, he and his parents had to leave their home. During the Second World War they lived in Slovakia, his father Ján joined the Slovak National Uprising in Turany. After the end of the war the family was able to return to their estate in Bimbula. Ľubomír studied at grammar school in Levice and was accepted to the Faculty of Education of the Comenius University in Bratislava. After receiving the call-up order, on November 1, 1952 he had to enlist in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions, where he stayed until November 1, 1954. The family land and property was confiscated by the totalitarian machinery and yet for the second time, they were evicted from their village. They moved to Zvolen. Ľubomír had problems to find a job and after some time he got employed at the state property in Diviaky, at the building construction department. Later he worked at District Construction Company in Zvolen, where he stayed until his retirement. He is married, has two children - son and daughter - and he lives in Zvolen.