Eva Boros - February 11, 1983
Return to Bratislava
On the train?
On the train and then we bought a ticket and we went on the train. There was one little problem, we didn't have money, Slovak money. So from Hungary to Slovakia, so the same thing uh, when we came to the, uh... In order to be able to cross the border, we went back to the same people that made that my brother knew the family of the man that lived in Hungary, on the border of Hungary—
border of Czechoslovakia to Hungary. And we knew where they lived. We--I, since we went there, we remembered. And we went to this little village with the train. And we, we stepped off the train there, it was night and we waited until, we went to the bathroom or I don't really exactly remember. It might not have been guarded as heavily. We went to these people and told them we are here and please help us. Of course, it was their life on the... And uh, so they said, fine, we cannot do it anymore because the border is so heavily guarded that it's, they are not willing to, to do it again, for no money in the world. What they did, they took us to uh, the fields where they thought that it might be easier to cross and it might be not as badly guarded and people don't use this uh, crossing so much. So, they, they know, they are peasants, they know the area a hundred percent. And they took us and they told us how to go. So the three of us went, and uh, they gave us some kind of uh, recog...recognizing points which were, of course, absurd because we were, we didn't know the area. The first time in our lives that we went all by ourselves at night, on an open field. So anyway, we did make it and uh, we crossed the field, which uh, we uh, it was winter and it was this weather. The snow came all the way until the knees. It was muddy and--but we crossed it and we arrived to the street, to, to some road that they told us in advance that we will find. We slept in the, how do you call the, the roadside, ditch.
A ditch, yeah.
And uh, in the morning when it started to be uh, where we slept--you can imagine how we slept--we didn't have a thing, we couldn't take with us anything. Be...no belongings whatsoever--not that we had much, but nothing at all because it would have been even more uh, suspicious. We arri...so then we got up and we had a terrible problem to get from there to the train to go to Bratislava. So we did find out by the descriptions that we are in Slovakia because they said that we have to arrive into a uh, a big, not village, it was a um, farm. It was a farm, in Europe the farms, the big farms are built usually by small um, how do you call that uh, somebody who doesn't have a big title or a small title. Small...
Government people?
No, no, no, no, no. The uh, monarchy.
Oh my God, serfs or something.
Yeah, some small.
Yeah.
So that's, it was big and you could see that, that they have--and that's how we found out. And then, by, it was Sunday morning. It was lucky that there was not, not many people were coming. The peasants didn't go to the fields. It would have been very suspicious otherwise. So uh, by chance uh, the uh, carriage that takes those whatever people, the uh, gentlemen to, to church came this way and we asked him for a lift. And he was very amazed. I mean you know, it's like falling from sky. Who are you? So we didn't explain too much. We said we, we uh, we went for a, a long walk and we missed the road and uh, we didn't know how to get out, we didn't want to, to go across the border to Hungary so we just stayed until morning. And uh, so he said, "Well, I will take you to the train, but it's really not right." My brother had a fountain pen, which he gave to him. That was all the money. Couldn't give you know, we didn't have enough money for the train. So uh, he paid, we arrived to the train, luckily. The thing was terribly suspicious and the, the fact that he didn't go to the, to the genda...gendarme was just luck, plain luck. Anyway, the train was very guard...guarded again. They guarded it not because of people, they guarded it, I think, at this point more from uh, from the enemy. And uh, so they didn't really pay attention to us. We got on the train, it wasn't enough money and uh, we paid only half a ticket for my brother and me. And I somehow tried to make myself as small as possible, which was pretty difficult. Anyway, we arrived in Bratislava, my parents did not have an idea that we are arriving. Now when you get out of the train, you have to have a ticket that you paid, it's customary everywhere. I don't know in the States I haven't used the train yet, I don't know how it's done here, but that's how it's done in Europe. You have the ticket and you have to show it at the gate too when you get out. Uh, also, you have to show your identification, especially in, in Bratislava. And we had, I cannot tell you today what happened, but we were not checked. We were not checked. So we have very close friends, Jewish friends close to the uh, train station. Bratislava is a pretty big city and you cannot walk. And at this point we weren't able to walk. It would have been awfully suspicious after such a night in the ditch to walk across Bratislava when every Jew was picked up.
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