Blue eyes cannot lie
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Aviva Magen, née Alica Markovičová, was born May 25, 1926 in Bratislava into a secular Jewish family as the youngest and only daughter out of four children. Her parents ran a business which was taken over by Alica’s mother after her father had died. While in grammar school, Alica got acquainted with members of the Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair and she began attending their meetings. After she had been expelled from the grammar school in 1941, she went through a Hachshara preparatory course in Čadča, which lasted until spring 1942 when deportations of male members of the movement started. Aviva Magen returned to Bratislava where she was surviving with false documents as a household maid and later she moved to Banská Bystrica. In autumn 1944 she met paratroopers Chaviva Reiková and Rafael Reisz, who had been sent from Palestine to support the Slovak National Uprising, and she was hiding with them in forests near Banská Bystrica. When they were arrested and later executed, she was interrogated as well, but eventually she was released. Aviva subsequently returned to Bratislava where she saw the end of the war. All her three older brothers died during the war, but her mother has survived. Aviva studied a medical faculty and after her wedding she emigrated to Israel in 1949 with her husband and her mother. She lived in kibbutz Kfar Makabi and later in Jerusalem. She raised two children, twins, with her husband. Aviva Magen now lives with the family of her daughter in Givat Brenner.
