Děda’s Story

Eh, so, uh...
My war experiences were partly happened in a territory which was
Occupied by Hungarian
And we escaped from Hungary to Slovakia, uh
Because it was easier to hide
In this, uh, in this Slovak state
Which was a puppet, uh, government of the German Nazis
Now so, uh, for a while, we were, uh, living under false
These false documents, but then in uh, in 1944, in August
Uh, the Slovaks started a revolution against Germans
And I got involved
First by helping to, uh, carry or to load
Weapons and, uh... ammunitions
And after that I got, uh...
I got enrolled for a so-called "partisan unit"
Which was fighting the Germans
And this was... and this was an uprising that started in August
But then when finally the Germans defeated the Slovak uprising
And so we had to retreat to the mountains
And this was at the beginning of the winter
And I had spent, uh... November, December, January, February, uh
And early March in the mountains
With this partisan unit
And around then, uh, it happened that I was, I-I, uh...
(Obscured)

A territory which was already liberated
So, this is about a very short period, very
Uh, of course this is a very important, a very short
Uh, actually, I'm telling you what happened
Uh so, of course there were very many traumatic issues
No, this did not happen, we always knew exactly what, what
What is the date
What is the day, and month
This is uh, because we were, of course, uh...
Listening to the radio

We-we knew what is the date, and we knew how it had developed
How the war is developing
We would listen in to London
The BBC, the British Broadcasting Cooperation
This was the most reliable cooperation
And we always kept Moscow transmissions, but uh
It was not as clean and reliable as the British broadcasting
Well uh, the most terrifying news was that in December, 1944
The Germans had still enough forces
That they started an attack on American, uh, units
Which were already on the border of Germany, in uh...
It was in the, on the border of France and Germany
They still had enough power to
Launch an, an attack on the American, uh, army
So this was pretty terrifying, that
It means that they are still strong enough that
The war can continue maybe a few months
And it was at the very end of uh, our exhaustion
Exhaustion, our food, our ammunition, everything
So this was uh... this was quite present, uh
For more or less the bad news
We were quite... we were quite depressed
Because it meant that
We had to count on a long, uh, long uh, war
Going on still, and deeply in 1945, when we were out of everything
Of food and ammunition
And we had to stay in a very isolated place
In which we were camping, uh
In the Slovakia, in the winter
Although this was a temporary thing

Uh, we, really, our only hope
(Obscured)
Was that the Germans would be defeated
(Obscured)
What happened back then does not change how I will live my life, no

Dedicated to George Fodor (Děda)