Emil Melioris

“I have good memories on the Slovak State. My mom used to travel to Poprad almost every week. We had a cow and we used to make butter. When having some spare butter, mom would take it to the marked once a week. However, in those weeks when Jews were being taken away from Poprad, she brought home about 5 or 6 mugs. When she came home and father returned from work, he was so mad he broke up almost all of the mugs. ʻI don´t want to see this anymore! So you shall profit from how the Jews were slaughtered there?! And you shall have greed for some junk left after them?ʼ This I said just to demonstrate what kind of thinking my father had. My mom got such a reproach for those mugs she even cried back then. Our father was in his opinions very much alike me.”

“I was born on April 25, 1931. When being six years old I started to attend the elementary school. I did quite well and since I was one of the good students, my parents decided to send me to grammar school in my fifth grade. However, to my own detriment, in the sixth grade I joined an anti-state organization led by my schoolmates in Spišská Nová Ves. Sometimes I feel like laughing, other times like crying when I recall how naive we were. We thought that such common students can contribute to depose the regime by such actions; actions literally including also an armed rebellion. And in the end the group leader quarrelled with our teacher, who wanted to give him a bad mark, that he even threatened him with a gun. This way it all got out. At first, the leader was arrested. From the very beginning I criticized the fact that they blew up the railway near Markušovce using the stolen dynamite. Thus I completely lost all my will to cooperate in such things, as it was obvious it was not right to act this way. However, I got to prison in Košice, where we stayed on remand for about three weeks. I was in a solitary confinement in the State Security´s office, being all day so hungry that I had painful squeals in my ears, what was the worst punishment ever. I was so down, that thoughts like hitting the wall with my head were coming to my mind. So badly I wanted it to end. Yet, much worse thing was that I got expelled from school. I decided to deal with it by working. I got a job. There was a mine in our area and they were hiring workers quite gratefully. Thus I stayed there and worked in a mine for 15 years. Later I worked in a railway company for 13 years. I was also at the joint cooperative for a year, but it was so miserable, in such condition that I refused to work there. I said to myself that not money is worth of me labouring there. This cooperative didn´t have a chance. When I wanted my salary, I had to go and find the head of the district office. But we didn´t settle anything there either, so we passed to the Party´s district office. There we were given a cheque, which I brought to a bank. The bank could not use it for anything else, but our salary. It was really begging for own money from month to month and thus I quit and left back to Rudňany mine.”