Zoltan Rubin - January 12, 1983
Arrest of Father
Before the deportations, was your family bothered at all? Was, was your father arrested? Were you taken to a camp?
Yes. When...The first thing what the Slovaks did, they, they wanted to extort money, so they took some thirty most influential people in this, in the, in Prešov and the vicinity. Okay, they took him for lunch one weekend, among them my father was in there, they kept him locked up, and they told him, "This is how much money you have to pay up," and they let him...then, Sunday they let him out. They came out with so much money for the government, and they let them out.
Where did they keep them?
They were in the, in the, in the ??? shul they kept, under guard. And uh, this is how, this was the first time that really my father--he was a smart man--he really, he really felt there was going to be trouble, and we were trying to do things, but it was...everything was too late. It was too late for older people to run uh, '39, '40, and somehow, somehow the circumstances, it, it, it was working so fast. Everything was coming so suddenly on us that uh, that even, even the people who run away, like youngsters, like young people, like me for running away from one country to another country, it was overnight because it was hard to cross the border already. It was, it was rough. It was...
Was there any opportunity before, to uh, to leave Prešov before 1939?
Before the...? Oh yes, anybody who wanted could go. Anybody.
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