“Some time after we returned from the military anti-tank unit, at the building administration we distributed various materials, cleaning products, floor cloths, etc. As the cleaning was being done everywhere, the soldiers were used to help out at bigger sites. So the soldiers went cleaning and I distributed them what they needed. There was a lieutenant Boklažuk, I still remember his name, who was very nice to me. He granted me ‘bumážka’ – an official paper that I was assigned to go to the whole camp territory, including the training units and international troops, mainly the Russian ones. There I was supposed to sketch plans of the buildings to see how many of them were livable, how many were not and what conditions they were like. So this is also what I did; I was favored at least a little bit.”
“My father was tried by the Regional Court in Trenčín. When they asked the informer, ‘Since when are you a member of the Communist Party?’ he answered, ‘I have always been one!’ However, he had never been in the Party, he only pretended so. Thus the judge, seeing there were solely personal reasons, gave him the fine, I guess, because he didn’t come. The fine was quite rare and it was only small sum of money. This way, my father was set completely free in the trial.”
“Germans settled at the upper end of Papradno, where the Jewish cemetery was. It was fenced by app. a half meter high wall. There they were hiding, but the partisans surrounded them and forced them to surrender. However, the gunfight broke out and the Germans, wanting to run home and be free, since already giving up, were shot dead.”
Róbert Uškovitš was born on December 5, 1928 in the village of Papradno in Považská Bystrica district. He comes from a teachers’ family. He studied at grammar school in Žilina, where he graduated in 1949. During the summer 1949 he completed a teaching course and in the same year he began working as a teacher at the National School in Horná Tižina -Staňová rieka. On October 1, 1950 he received call-up papers and immediately enlisted in Košice anti-tank horse drawn artillery. After about a month he was called for political inspections and in November 1950, as a politically unreliable person (of ‘E’ classification), he was deprived of gun and moved to Libavá in Moravia. Within the Auxiliary Technical Battalions he worked at different places until October 25, 1953. In 1954 he started to work as a planner for woodcarving cooperative in Rajecké Teplice, and then for a short period in 1956 he taught at elementary school in Terchová. In 1957 he became a director of school in Ovčiarsko; since 1958 he worked in Divina - Lúky, and in years 1962 - 1968 he was a teacher at elementary school in Strečno. Róbert Uškovitš died on April 14, 2023.
