“So the [minister] sent policemen to set the public order. They were here wearing helmets with bayonets. They were Czechs, I don’t know from where exactly, but members of the Hlinka Guard were detained. They voluntarily went with the police on the first floor of the opposite part of our building, where they were closed. One of the guards was resisting, kicking the door and the like, and his name was Anton Kopal. One of the policemen shot him down.”
“We were standing and lopping a corridor, mining a tunnel. We had such four two-meter long hollow drills, but since we didn’t have any water, we had to drive them with compressed air. We worked in such filth that we could see only one and a half meters further. When we got to the surface, our lungs were like a pipe organ. Luckily, we had only six-hour work shifts. Even though there was a big half-meter exhauster, it was not enough at all.”
“You know, at first they had to wear stars. It was a terrible degradation for them. And of course, they were evicted from their homes and deported away. But when I saw the Jewish kids, they had great fear. When they went to streets, everyone had to be marked by a Jewish Star. They walked in crouch and very quickly if they had to go and buy something they needed to have some food. The truth is that they even had fear to walk through the streets.”
Dušan Bublík was born on March 13, 1925 in Bratislava. At first his family lived in quarter Podhradie (Suburbium), but in 1929 they moved to newly opened living complex called Živnodom. Dušan’s father was a successful businessman, owning a well-known furrier’s shop. Dušan grew up in pre-war Bratislava, marked by increased anti-Semitism and anti-Czechoslovak ambience. In his neighborhood, a member of the Hlinka Guard Anton Kopal was shot down, who was one of the two victims of the so-called Homola’s putsch. This incident imminently preceded declaration of the warlike Slovak State. During the war Dušan finished education at the secondary technical school, witnessed the Bratislava’s bombing and experienced the invasion of Soviet Army. He was hiding from Soviets at hillside of Malé Karpaty. When the war ended, for a short time he studied at the Technical University, however, he didn’t finish his studies and in 1950 he received a call-up order. He enlisted in the compulsory military service in military camps of the forced labor as a member of the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). Within the Action B, his father was in 1952 evicted from his flat in Živnodom and yet before this, his business had been nationalized. After the release to civilian life Dušan Bublík worked in electro-technical plan until his retirement.
