Erika Brániková
* 1931 †︎ 2021
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„We just had an exam in Marxism-Leninism, and they called me out of the classroom that someone was waiting for me there. They were members of the State Security, they wanted to get me to ‘their side’ to rat on people. I didn't know what they wanted. They came to me for the second and third time. I finally told them that I couldn't meet them in a café because I scream out of my dreams. I told them I was unreliable that I would reveal everything. And that's how it ended; they didn't get me.”
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„The occupation in 1968 was terrible. I was just in the healing spa. My brother's daughter was with my mother's so that she would not be alone. Brother found out it at night as soon as it happened. The next day he came to us and he, a former partisan, rolled up on the table and cried. He cried he couldn't stand it anymore. And they went away, they emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany.”
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„Members of the State Security came to the parish in Motyčky twice. When they came for the first time, pastor said that when they shoot us, they may also shoot him. He disagreed with all this and they just took his cow. There were often State Security commando beside us, we heard them screaming, we had a common wall. We had to be totally silent and my sister was little, she was three years old. So, there was a lot of fear. We were not allowed to show up anywhere.”
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Full recordings
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Ohel David, Bratislava , 16.09.2019
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Erika Brániková, nee Tyrolerová was born on July 20, 1931 in Banská Bystrica to a Jewish family of advocate Emil Tyroler and violinist Magda Tyrolerová. Her father died when she was eight years old. Subsequently, the mother, with the help of church representative, converted to the Catholic faith. During the Slovak state, Erika was hidden in the Uršulínky Monastery in Bratislava, while her mother worked as a violinist of the Slovak Radio. From August 1944 to April 1945, she and her family were hiding at the parish in Motyčky. After successfully graduating at the University of Economics in Bratislava, she worked as an editor and later as a responsible editor in the publishing house Obzor. She worked there until retirement in 1987. Nowadays she lives in Bratislava in Ohel David.
