Milan Brišš

“Considering that my father was a tradesman, we should have been evicted three times under the Action B. However, there was a pharmacist, who came from Hruštín near Oravský Podzámok, and he stood up for us. Other neighbours did the same; they said we did nothing bad, we were a good family. Nothing mattered; three cars were driven up in front of our house twice. They were adamant about our eviction, because they thought we had a bad influence on people as we were bourgeois. Nowadays, there are others and they can live peacefully.”

“When we were children, we really experienced a lot of fear and affliction. We were afraid, because on one side there was a German garrison staying at the end of the village of Novoť, or rather in the neighbouring village, and on the other side, in the village of Lomná, there was certain group of partisans, who stayed there after the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising into the mountains, and they always, especially in October, rode the wagons they had stolen from peasants. That peasant usually went with them around the shops and around the houses of wealthy people and took everything from them. But we were afraid of it. Moreover, there was no electricity then, it was introduced in 1957 after my mom’s death; she died in August 1957 and the electricity was introduced in October. Oh, my poor mom, she didn’t live to see it. Well, sometimes the Germans came at night and asked for example, ‘Wo ist Partisan?’ and as we were sleeping and we were six children there, we really had fear. Our parents had to get up and they were shining a torch in all rooms and then they left. A few minutes later partisans came. ‘Is Fritz here?’ Once it happened in a neighbouring village of Oravská Lesná that both garrisons, Germans and partisans, met there and started firing and killed the whole family there, both parents and their children.”

“When I left the school in Riečnica village, I started studying at the Faculty of Law of Comenius University. It was in September. Well, but what happened? At the beginning of the third year I was invited to the dean’s office, where fifteen people sat and they told me, ‘Comrade Brišš.’ I said, ‘I’m not a comrade.’ ‘You can’t study at the Faculty of Law, because you have bourgeois background.’ Then, I was expelled. And what actually caused it? It happened, because I was suggested to go studying international relations to the Soviet Union and thus they decided to check me and they found it out.”

“In the period around the year 1945, the situation after the liberation was bad, because then the Soviet Army soldiers were leaving the mountains and as they went through the village they were stealing everything they needed. Even though we covered our stuff from sight, bricked it up in anteroom and the like, they broke through it and found everything. Certainly, if we had given it to our neighbours, we probably wouldn’t have lost it, because as our house was built of bricks and the neighbouring were wooden, they knew they would find something and really took a lot of our things away.”

“I had appealed against my expulsion for the third time before I started studying at pedagogical faculty. It was on Dunajská Street and who met me there? It was on Leningradská Street and it was Peter Colotka, a former prime minister. He also was there at that time. He apologized to me that he could do nothing as there were several other people deciding it. He also added that my third appeal was actually successful as they came to a conclusion that after a proper examination of my cadre material I was allowed to pursue my studies at the faculty of law. And I told him, ‘No, I’m already studying at the pedagogical faculty and I do not believe you anymore, you would dismiss me even before the final state examination.’”

“I wasn’t accepted to the faculty of arts, but I received a call-up to a mine instead. From October 1, 1951 to February 10, 1954, I worked in a pit in Ostrava-Karviná region almost every day, because then we also worked on Saturdays and Sundays. I had two days off including the time spent travelling there. It wasn’t far from Orava, I went by train and then changed to bus. There were no such holidays like people have these days. I as well as the others there didn’t know what the mine was. I had never seen it before. At first we only had training without weapons, naturally, and we learnt something about occupational safety, about a mine, as we hadn’t seen it before. We mined in a depth of about 800 or 1,000 meters under the ground. When I first worked in a pit, I didn’t know how to turn round there. Each soldier was assigned to a civilian who was called a pitman in the Ostrava-Karviná region. We got a shovel; there was a lot of dust as he drilled there, and the lamps were very dark and gave just a little light. A man didn’t know where to turn, so accidents occurred quite often. Fortunately, I didn’t get any injury at the beginning, but later I was injured twice. A rock, or rather a stone, fell from the roof when we mined coal. It fell on my foot and even though I wore boots and work clothes with padding, it broke my thumb, so I was moved to the surface with coal and taken to the hospital in Orlová. My thumb was sutured there and then I was taken by an ambulance car to the barracks in Sovinec, in Karviná and I stayed there for several weeks. If I can say it lightly, I rested there.”

“It was interesting that after I had finished studying, I was successful at work, but when I asked for being rehabilitated after the change of the regime in 1989, there was created a sort of commission at the faculty of law and I was announced that I had never studied at the faculty of law. I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I put all my effort into it and after some time it was clarified. You see, they wanted to conceal it somehow.”