Bernard Hirsch - June 29, 1982
Leaving the Partisans
Do you remember anything in particular of the anti-Semitism that happened in the partisans?
Why we decided--yeah, this I remember, why we decided. We were four guys. One is in Israel he lives, one is in Baltimore, ???, and one just passed away a few weeks ago in, in New York. We were four guys. We, we were left four. Everybody was going his way. You know there is a--we went with the partisan. So when they walked out from our mountains where we were this--they were saying they are going to Hungaria with the Russian. Between us was lots of soldiers, Slovakia soldiers. So there are sitting and talking, you know, like soldiers they're discussing what we're going to do, what's going to happen, who's the--what they're going to do, the big guys with us. Now the big guys they said they're going to Ru...to Hungarian. The Slovaks there were there a few gu...big guys--Slovak--they say, "I just want to get to a big town and I'm going home." So we didn't had already choice where to go with the Slovaks because they would have come to the town--they would have leave us in the middle of this. So we were going with the Russians, with the Russian like we're going to Hungarian.
Mm-hm.
One day was a friend what was between us, he's in Israel. He went to ask the commissar from the Russian, this. He said, "You are Slovak Jews, you go with the Slovaks," they said. "Go with the Slovak." With the Slovaks we couldn't go because they were saying that they want to get home. So this--when they said this, we four guys we got lost between from them and we went our way. Maybe when the partisan would have run into us, who knows what would have happen. This what happened. But uh, the Russian they said, "You Jews, you go with the Slovaks." So we saw it already where we are.
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