We took our things from home for a week, but didn’t return home until nine months later
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Mária Mištinová, nee Drineková, was born on November 22, 1932 in Hluk na Morave. Her father, Cyril Dřinek, worked as a builder and mother Mária was a housewife. The witness had an older brother, Eugene, and a younger brother, Mirko. Father Cyril was one of the main organizers of the Slovak National Uprising in Bánovce nad Bebravou. The day before the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, the whole family left Bánove and came to Slatina nad Bebravou. They hid in the house of an evangelical pastor. However, a week later they were already traveling to Závada pod Čiernym vrchom. There, the witness also met the partisan commander Teodor Pola, who commanded the entire brigade. In Závada, she and her mother were preparing a field hospital for the wounded. She remembers the fleeing Jews. They hid in the bunkers where she fell ill. She relayed messages and brought food to the people in the bunkers. A reward of 50 000 crowns was offered for catching the family of Cyril Dřinek. Later they traveled to Miezgoviec, where they lived with an old woman. They also spent Christmas there. Partisan commanders tasked her with obtaining false identification cards. The witness fell ill again. In February, they hid their brother and his friend from the Germans in the house. They raided the village. The brother was already 17 years old and was in the mountains with his father. In mid-February, they traveled through Jankov vŕšok, where they witnessed the burning of partisan bunkers. The sick witness was transported in a wagon, under straw, across the Slovakian-Czech border to Hluk na Morave to her grandmother. There she saw the end of the war. After the war, she graduated as a teacher, married Anton Miština and gave birth to two children. She devoted her whole life to children as a teacher of the Slovak language and playing the piano. Her father was one of the authors of the Slovak National Uprising mound on Jankov vŕšok, where she went every year. However, she was not politically involved. In August 1968, she could not believe that the country was occupied by the sons of those who liberated us. In year 2021 she lived in a social services facility in Jacovce. She wrote a book of memories about the war and the Slovak National Uprising. Mária Mištinová died in 2022.
