All my life I have tried to be accommodating
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.