Ivan Bergida

"I experienced a lot of anti-Semitism there, because those kids will say what they hear at home and say to me, 'You're not playing with us because you're a Jew.' But then other kids said I could play with them. But that anti-Semitism in those childhoods was simply direct and existential. It was an elementary school. We lived in the same apartment building and there used to be a family above us, they had a boy my age. Sometimes I was at their house. And suddenly his mother says, 'Are you a bourgeois?' I didn't even know what it meant, only that it had a negative accent. And she insisted and kept asking, seeing that my parents worked infinitely a lot and that we had nothing. But it was the idea of those people that every Jew is rich and bourgeois. Such experiences were always there, even when I was already working. I may talk about that later, but I can say it now, too. I worked in a company and during the Prague Spring in ‘68, it was discussed whether the federal system first or democracy first. I don't know why it was supposed to be in a certain order, it can be done all at once. But it was a topic, and I was of the opinion that democracy first and my boss told me, 'That's why you're not in favor of dissolution, because you're not Slovak.' So he meant - you are a Jew, you are not Slovak, you do not belong with us. So it was a permanent experience and speaking of which, in Slovakia it was better not to say that we are Jews. Sometimes it came out, but many people tried to hide it. I had a classmate in high school who I didn't know was a Jew all along. I only found out after he left. But we knew about us, about my wife, her family, so her father was the chairman in the village. My father, we were kosher, we built a sukkah in the yard during the holidays, so everyone knew about us that we were Jews. And when we came to Germany, we were surprised to find that it was easier to be a Jew than in Slovakia, with the fact that when we said that, people didn't know what to do with it now, how to react, they were frightened. For that past was known to them, and there stands a living one in front of them. So it wasn't very nice either, but it was easier than in Slovakia. "

"They didn't talk at all, much less with us children. But sometimes someone came to the house who had experienced it and so I learned something here and there. I would always put together little pieces of information. Nobody told me anything about it. So I know very little, especially I know almost nothing about my mother's family. They all perished. Mom would be the only source if I were to ask, but that wasn't a topic at home. But I remember, once a lady came to us and they were talking about that time, and my mother suddenly said that if she had known in advance what she would have to go through, she would have ended it beforehand. And that shocked me, because we were a nice family, and I said to myself that everything would be gone if she had done it then. But it will say something about what a time it was like when they had to survive. "