Anton Pasternák

* 1948

  • Someone reported because I heard words from the man in question that I already knew from someone, how clever I am and what I know. I say, I am just the opposite, I do not have the character to do such things. I was assured that I didn't have to do anything myself, everything would be told to me that what needed, where needed, who to talk to and so on, I could go to my brother whenever I wanted, and with the whole family, I could do everything ... But I didn't sign it. I guess I don't know, nine times or how many times they called me. Only then did I enter basic military service.

  • So with one colleague, with whom I also worked in Tôňa, she also ended school in Liberec, we went to the local company and we worked there. For a short time, because work clothes were made there, and then no one wanted work clothes anymore, there were about a hundred sewing machines, it was a huge, large sewing workshop. Then two guys came, I think from Horné Saliby or from where, they already had the private sector and that they would rent the sewing workshop and we started making these "texasky", jeans, children's jeans. Interestingly - then they got some Americans, Orthodox Jews, came to that sewing workshop and we started sewing "texasky" for them as well, but short, for women, well, I don't know how many thousands we sewed. It took about a year, and in a year they came, at Christmas night with a truck, and they, these two guys, took all - and that was the end of the sewing workshop. Such was the time. They packed everything, I didn't know how many thousand meters of that jeans material. They owned it all, but without notice, without anything, you know, that way - they loaded and moved the nights.

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    Komárno, 23.03.2022

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All my life I have tried to be accommodating

Anton Pasternák
Anton Pasternák
photo: Post Bellum SK

Anton Pasternák, born on November 29, 1948 in Komárno, comes from a Hungarian Jewish family. His parents were among to survived the Nazi concentration camps. Their lives, as well as the stories of their extensive kinship, illustrate the complex and tragic fates of the Jewish population in Slovakia and Hungary in the 20th century. Anton himself lived a relatively peaceful life, but many of his relatives were severely affected by both Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. The whole immediate family of his father Eugene died in Auschwitz, his mother Anna’s family experienced a Budapest ghetto, several relatives emigrated from Hungary in 1956 and Anton’s brother from Czechoslovakia in 1968. Anton himself devoted his entire working life to textile production, he married a Hungarian Jewish and for 25 years he is the chairman of the Jewish religious community in Komárno, which is one of the most active in Slovakia.