"I don't know if I slept with a transistor in my ears, because that's how we watched, but when it came to going to the streets, I got such bronchitis that I lay dead for three weeks. And I was terribly sorry, I remember it like now, that I was looking at people from the apartment in Liptovský Hrádek, that they were going there, that this was happening, and I couldn't go. I am basically a curious person. And that I couldn't take part in all that in Mikuláš, because I had very good acquaintances in Mikuláš, and Slafkovský was actually my boss, the mayor, that was already in a new era. Well, I can't boast that I took part in some events. I'm not saying that I didn't go anywhere, but back then, in the eighty-ninth, I actually only went outside the window."
"And that was very good. Mom had a lot of classmates and friends. Neighbors in front, who actually lived in the same yard, so it was very good, very pleasant. Mom always mentioned that it was a completely different life and she could never understand that it could all end the way it did. She always closed it with memories of her friends, classmates from high school, who one day simply weren't there. And with the Jewish population, which was from the vicinity of Prešov, there was an awful lot, so they got along perfectly."
"She made friends, met, walked around the corse. You see, she always mentioned this: 'I wasn't afraid to go with Jewish women. They had a star, but I wasn't afraid to go with Jewish women. But why?'It was not understandable to her that why she should be afraid all of a sudden, I don't know, thanks to Marta, who lived with her during her childhood, that is, her youth, the beginnings of her youth. So she didn't see the difference until some of it was gone. Until she saw the marches through the city. And this is what I remember her saying: 'So imagine that they were taken and they are walking with those suitcases through the city to the station. Heads down and not a single cry, not a single shout, even the tiny children they were dragging along, they didn't blink, they didn't bother, they all walked humbly. Humbly with a capital "P" to that station'. And she repeated this a hundred times that she couldn't understand that they were leaving with such devotion and humility."
"Well, even before the bombing of Prešov, the guards came to take away dear grandfather. He was locked up in the Prešov prison and sometime in November 44 he went to transport. He bypassed Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and ended up in Bergen-Belsen, and that's the worst thing, that he's actually on the verge of peace, because in April forty-five Bergen-Belsen was liberated and he didn't survive. He got typhus, weak, a broken arm, he broke his arm somewhere in a quarry in Buchenwald, I don't know which camp. This we know."
"When they came and raided the houses, because the first house was Jewish, they came to them, to the Schwarzes, and then went to the yard. And there ours lived in a sublet. Well, that grandmother, who was blind in one eye since she was a child, had so much presence of mind and so much courage and also so much intelligence and skill, because you have to play it. Mom said: ``Well, I remember that mom, how the guards came, they rolled into the yard and Mrs. Maradíková, we came to check you, what you have here and I don't know what else, and show me where you have the stairs to go!'' Old mom she pointed and stood on those stairs and said: 'And you won't go on any trip. You are in the police inspector's apartment and you will not be allowed here!´ She simply threatened them. And the two in that attic. It wasn't such a hiding place that... They actually only hid for that moment when they knew there was going to be a raid."
Daniela Hroncová-Faklová was born on August 12, 1950 in Zvolen in the family of the evangelical priest Daniel Fakla (1924) and Elena Faklová, nee Maradíková (1925). During World War II, Daniela’s grandfather Ondrej Maradík, due to his position as a police inspector, knew quite precisely what was going to happen in the city and also knew about hostile actions and pogroms being prepared against the Jews. He tried to help the persecuted. He always warned the Jews in advance about an upcoming guard raid, he secretly collected records about Jews from the police records, thereby protecting many at least for a while. In 1944, however, he was reported, he was dragged away and died as a political prisoner in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Daniela’s parents got married in 1949. The family lived in the evangelical parish in Radvan in Banská Bystrica, and thanks to her parents, Daniela had a beautiful childhood. She grew up with a sister Eva, four years younger, and a brother Ján, ten years younger. In 1956, she started attending a nine-year elementary school. In 1965, she became a student at the Central General-Education School in Banská Bystrica, where she graduated three years later. In 1968, she was admitted to the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava to study ethnography, and in 1973 she successfully completed her studies. After graduation, she stayed in Bratislava for a year and worked in research at ÚĽUV (Center for Folk Art Production), then returned to Banská Bystrica. Daniela has two children with her first husband Ján Komár. Since 1983, she worked in the branch of the Liptovský Museum in Liptovský Hrádek. In 1991, she applied for the position of director of the Janko Kráľ Museum. She won the audition and managed the museum until 2008. In 2009, she met her second husband, Professor Ondrej Hronc. She retired, got married and moved to Košice. She writes and is the author of several books.
