Ľudovít Fischer

"So the end was quite intense. The last time the Germans came, they were already shooting. By then there were already partisans, I even have the impression...Kaliste was actually liberated by the Romanians, some Romanian unit. I know that they had a machine gun on the roof of our house, that is, that stable. Then we fled into the mountains. There was a gunfire, in short, shots were fired, and my father was wounded. His hand was shot, he couldn't move two fingers for the rest of his life. He was bleeding terribly, so we had to come back from the forest. And the irony is...they were normal civilian clothes, and he was bleeding. The Germans were already in the village. Then a German officer comes along and says, 'Sir, you're bleeding.' Well, hey. He pulled a bandage out of that first aid kit and bandaged his hand. So my father's life was actually saved by a German officer. Because the other roommate was also wounded, and he didn't bleed at all, and he died within two weeks."

"I was a very lukewarm party member. I was reproached for not going to meetings, for not being active. When the Russians came and started firing people, they fired a colleague, but I don't remember which one. Well, I wrote a letter saying that I didn't want to be a party member when they dismissed that colleague. I sent it. That's when my father intervened, his colleague - not his diplomat, but his assistant - she was the chairwoman of the party at the time, and she traced my letter."

"We used to play there. The Germans were afraid to be in that village for the night. There were never Germans there at night. And the village had one big advantage then. It was at the end of a long valley to the Mostenica, and at one place in that village, where the school was, you could see into that valley. So people knew about two hours ahead that the Germans were coming. Then the peasant... we have a painting of Kalisz by Lehotsky, I can show you, my mother discovered it after the war and, of course, we bought it. That village was on a steep hillside, so all the houses were cut into the ground. Such a typical house ended with such an earthen wall in the stone. And from there the house continued out. So between that wall, so that it wouldn't be damp, they had made a kind of wooden wall out of half-timbering, and there was a space in between. Whenever the Germans went, they hid us in there and piled up the wood, that was the woodshed. A dark woodshed, he used to throw a lot of wood in there. I know this from the story, the Germans actually came, they checked and , of course, they were looking for people. He opened that woodshed, so fortunately they didn't have dogs, the dog would probably have found us. My mother kept my mouth shut so I wouldn't say a word. We actually saw the German, but he didn't see us."