M.D. Ján Hanák

“The most powerful impression of all I have in me was hunger. We were still hungry. During one of the line ups, I noticed there was a canteen nearby. Some prisoners were peeling potatoes, and one of them went to a trash can and threw out the skins. When they were done, I went to this trash can and took out the skins. I brought them to our barrack; there were about fifty or even sixty of us. My brother and I washed the potato skins and baked them on a little stove we had there. It was about seventy years ago, whole seventy years, but until today, anytime I am in a restaurant, where a waitress comes and brings a menu…. There are listed five soups, dumplings, sausages, fish or poultry meals, pancakes or I don´t know what else, I keep looking at the menu. Although my mind is still in Sereď, in the trash can, and on the little stove, where the best meal ever was baked – the potato skins.”

“Together with my brother, I was looking for our mother, when suddenly we spotted one lady from Žilina. I asked her if she didn´t know our mom. She said she did, that she knew her very well, and so I told her we were looking for her. We didn´t see her from the fall and they told us in Sereď she was supposed to be in Theresienstadt. The lady told us she was there, but she was transported away and she didn´t know where they took her, whether to Auschwitz or elsewhere, but that she was no longer there. So, you can imagine how we felt about that. And, she added: ‘And you and your brother don´t show up here too much either, as they can take you away too, and you shall never come back!’ I didn´t understand why wouldn´t we come back, but she replied: ‘You know, the Jewish children never come back’. I said that we weren´t Jews, but she continued: ‘You maybe aren´t, but your parents are’.”