Alexander Štrba

"This is years about 1944. Before they were dragged away, they had to go to the ghetto. The streets and houses were marked, they had to leave everything where they lived and go to the ghetto. Well, they weren't there for long, because from 12th to 15th of June were the trains that went to Auschwitz and were concentrated in Grünfeld's brickyard. It's not far from the cemetery here in Nové Zámky and that's why it was there, that concentration, because there were rails and they simply solved it. So, before that, of course, they had to wear a star, so mom, the youngest sister, she was already eight years old, so she too, of course, had to be over six years old, and the parents took them together to that Grünfeld brickyard, and then the next day to they stuffed those wagons. She described how terrible it was, eighty people, one bucket, no air, nothing to eat, they were very rude, how long was the journey there. Well, when they got to Auschwitz and the next day, when Mengele sorted them left and right. Otherwise, when they were already there, they didn't know what would happen to them, because they always said they were going to work. However, it was also written Arbeit macht frei - Work makes free, in the camp, and when Mengele was sorting, of course, the parents, grandmother, grandfather and little Katka, who was eight, immediately on the left, mother and her sister on the right side. And that sister said then that she wanted to pass, that we should go to our parents, so that the family could stay together. And mom grabbed her at the last moment and pulled her close, and that's how the two of them stayed. Of course, the grandparents and Katka went to the gas chamber."

"Very bad. Very bad, because I knew it was absolutely, and one of the first things, that they didn't ask us. That was the basis. And I'm convinced that if they put their minds to it, it won't happen. And the second thing, I knew both of them, Klaus and Mečiar. They wanted nothing more than to fulfill their ideas, and we know that's what it was all about. And the third thing, I knew that even in the former Czechoslovakia, in Bohemia, the engineering industry was at a level and that was the basis of the entire economy, and here, in Slovakia, what happened? Nothing. And from this side I understood very well that it would be a great loss. She was, and she is now. So I had a very negative perception of it. Despite the fact that there was nothing I could do."

„There were three of them (siblings). Mother was twenty-two years old when she was taken away, the sister was nineteen and she also had one little eight-year-old Katka. And when they were taken to the concentration camp to Auschwitz, before that they were in the ghetto in May 1944 for a month and in June for the others were dragged to Auschwitz on the fourteenth of June, and when Mengele sorted them left and right, the nurse said that we should stay together with our parents. And that's how mom grabbed her at the last moment and that's how they saved themselves, because the older parents and little Katka immediately they were taken to the gas chamber. That's how they survived."

"When I started to deal with the history of Judaism and when the Lord God sent me from above that I was the one who should write it, that's when it started. And also the law that, despite the fact that my mother converted to the Catholic faith, but a son is taken when the mother is Jewish as if he were a Jew. I learned this very late, when I started coming here and sometimes when the ten men were missing for the minyan, they took me and they said that you are a Jew after all, so that it's not a problem. And otherwise I'm very proud of it, because first of all, when I take those walks, wanders (around the city) and I'm in the synagogue, I always remind them that three quarters of those who received the Nobel Prize as scientists are Jewish origin. I originally thought that it was because from the beginning they had to fight for survival day by day. And then it showed in those genes. But Czeizel Endre, who dealt with it, who wrote that it is not yes, but the main reason is that they put a lot of emphasis on children's learning, on school, and that is also reflected in what they achieved."

"I experienced the year 1968 like this, that at that time my son was three months old and my wife, who was breastfeeding, had no milk, and at that time there was a so-called Sunar, that's powdered milk. And there were two pharmacies on the square, on the main square. Now there isn't even one is. One is right here on the main square, and the other is opposite. And I know that they didn't have Sunar in one, and I wanted to go to the other. And I look, and tanks in the square. I didn't know what it was. Absolutely. Like it went off. It wasn't a problem to cross because they were just sitting there and then I went home and started listening to the radio and that's when the Russians came. It was August 21."