“In 1942, when most Jews had to leave to be transported to Auschwitz, my teacher told me during a lesson: ʻEvička, would you, please, wait for me after school?’ So I waited until there were just the two of us. Then she hugged me and cried. I also cried. Because those people were our friends and we were saying goodbye. Even though my father wasn´t in danger yet, they were our friends. And it was terrible because there was a little girl going around asking: ʻWhy are you crying?’ And the girl was leaving too, and she never came back. There was another family with a 19-year old daughter severely suffering from tuberculosis who was to arrive all the way from the Vyšné Hágy Medical Center. The deportees were first concentrated in a Jewish school in Nitra and as she was unable to walk, they dragged her on to a stretcher, but she died yet before they got to the cattle car. So obviously, were they really leaving for work? But there was a couple with no children: Mr. Strasser, a fine craftsman, and Mrs. Strasser, a seamstress who made clothes for us. And when they were leaving they both said: ʻWe are not afraid, we can work hard, we will find an occupation (in Poland).’ But they never came back because they were not going to work; surely they were going to die.”
“In Brno I experienced the German occupation. It was a tough day. I was 9 years old. The weather was bad, damp, and foggy. It drizzled. German troops were rolling down the streets; cavalry, infantry. Aunt Maři was standing by the window, crying. She did not send me to school, it was too dangerous. Later, on my way to school (back at Veveří, before my aunt moved), there was a military warehouse guarded by German soldiers. Being afraid, I chose to cross the road to avoid them. I used to walk to my piano lessons past the Kaunicovy koleje (dormitories). Those fateful dorms, where my father once was a student, became a prison. Because universities were closed down, students were taken to forced work in Germany and if not, then they were arrested. People were imprisoned in the dormitories. And there were too many. Walking to my music lesson I was passing by the dorms and I saw a courtyard and a fence around it. And in front of the fence, walking around, there were ladies, spouses of the imprisoned, hoping their husbands or brothers or sons would see them and understand they were thinking about them. They did not know that if a prisoner showed up in the window, shooting would follow.”
“So after the liberation we were waiting until things calmed down and as the front was moving further towards Bratislava, we tried to work out what to do next. Our apartment was completely robbed. We had nothing left. Mrs. Kirtová, whom I stayed with when I studied at my middle school in Nitra, opened her apartment up to those who were homeless. It wasn´t just our family, there were a lot of us. Because not only did people start arriving from their hidings, but also from concentration camps and they had nowhere to go. Their apartments and houses were mostly occupied by people who, through aryanization, seized the property of those who had been deported to concentration camps. And, they did not like to see the people come back, honor to exceptions. Because some gave everything back and sheltered the returnees. Our place was robbed, so we got accommodated in Nitra. My father started to look for work. Young people of my age and older started to connect socially, there were boys arriving from the uprising, boys and girls arriving from concentration camps. I knew many of them and they were deeply hurt. There were young people, whose parents never came back and who were yanked out of their parents’ arms, and whose parents ended up in gas chambers. There were too many tragedies and I started to realize what the Holocaust in its breadth and depth actually means.”
Eva Mosnáková was born in 1929. Her father, who worked as a veterinarian, was Jewish and her mother was a Czech Christian. She grew up in the mining town of Handlová. After the worsening of the political situation in the 1930´s, she spent two years in Brno living with her aunts and experienced the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Later her family settled in the town of Močenok near Nitra. Eva attended a catholic middle school. Due to his economic importance as a vet, a dispensation from deportations was granted to Eva´s father, so the family was spared from the first wave of transports to concentration camps. However, after the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising all dispensations were abolished. They found their refuge in a family of Sudeten German Henrich Konrád and his Slovak wife Terka Mosnáková. The family of two children let them stay in their bedroom hiding from the SS for 7 months. Occasionally, they had to go to other people, to fields and vineyards. Eventually, Terka´s brother Vlado Mosnák, active in the resistance, took responsibility for their hiding. Due to his illegal activities, Vlado was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Mauthausen. After the liberation, Vlado and Eva got married and their two sons Vladimir and Fedor were born. In the 1950´s, Vlado was accused of fraud in a fabricated trial and sentenced to one year in the Jáchymov uranium mines. While serving his sentence he was granted amnesty, but only much later he was fully rehabilitated. Eva encountered professional demotion and maltreatment due to her open rejection of the 1968 Soviet occupation. At the time of the documentary, she was dedicated to helping Holocaust victims and led a senior survivors’ club at the ŽNO. Eva Mosnáková died on November 29, 2024.
