Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eva Boros - February 11, 1983

German Annexation

in '40 uh, the uh, the-- in '39 I think Hitler entered Czechoslovakia if I'm not mistaken, and in '40 uh, they gave permission to, to uh, whoever was in the uh, Nazi party of the Slovak uh, Nazi Party uh, to uh, take possession of whatever Jewish possession there are, and they just could come in and uh, tell the uh, store owner that from tomorrow on you don't have to even come anymore. And this, it was then just given. You know, you just were put out of your store and that was the end of it.

Mm-hm.

And what you did or what you didn't was your business. So uh, in '42 the first um, Jewish uh, young people were sent to concentration camps. And uh, the whole Czechoslovakia, since Bratislava is on the border of Austria was sent through Bratislava. And uh, so my father since the store wasn't owned anymore, he started to go with the uh, Jewish um, community center, I would call it, of the town uh, which organized itself uh, more or less into what they could still have. And uh, started to take food to the people that went through the town. And my father was one of those. There is a book actually that does mention the family and my father himself in a book that came out uh, in Israel uh, by a gentleman named Dr. Neumann. I have the book if you are interested, but it's written in German. So... The uh, spoken language in Bratislava was German.

Oh really.

Yeah. And we at home spoke German.

No Yiddish?

Not Yiddish, no.

How old were you at this time?

I was born in '32, so '39 I was uh, uh, how old was I uh, seven years old and uh, and so on. Uh, the end of the '32, I was in November, which I... So uh, at this point, in '42 uh, my father decided that uh, we have family in Hungary and uh, he sent my sister uh, who is older, about uh, five or six years from me. She was born in, in '27 and my brother, my oldest brother who uh, died in concentration camp in Austria uh, was uh, he was born in '27, '25, '25. So they send them to Hungary to uh, relatives.


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