Anton Gajdošík

* 1933

  • “Already in 1948 they offered people to enter the JRD (Joint Agricultural Cooperative) and they promised all kinds of outcoming advantages. However, all what it meant was to put down all the cows, land and work as a slave for free. You know, I am telling you how it really was. They oppressed people in many ways, who in the end, had no other choice than to join the coop. My father was imprisoned in Ružomberok for four months just because he was unable to meet assigned contingents, the compulsory delivery quotas.”

  • “There was one very sad story that happened. One citizen had helped partisans. We were at school and about 200 partisans came to our village. He accommodated some of them and they asked him for civil clothes. Those were Czech citizens. He helped them and they left uniforms and guns at his house. His name was Matej Paulec. Everything was all right, when suddenly some bastard informed the Gestapo in Prečín about it. I saw how about 15 or 20 German soldiers came and went to his house. They detained him and took him to the Gestapo office in Prečín.”

  • “He was a surveyor here during the land enclosure. He worked as an engineer and geodesist, however, when the partisans came to the village, he joined them. You probably don’t know the surroundings here, but towards the Mojtín there is the Hluchá Valley, Zliechov and then Pružina. There the Germans attacked them and it was only by miracle that the Jew, Ing. Ľudovít Berkovič, survived. He said he was licking dew from the trees and that’s how he saved himself. He knew this area well, it was only about four or five kilometers from Tŕstie through Riedke. He came to my father, who was drawing water for the cattle in the evening and he asked him for help. My dad let him hide in our hayloft and there he stayed.”

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    Horný Moštenec, 14.10.2017

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Not professionalism, but the party’s membership decided on people’s fates

Anton Gajdošík - photo from criminal military service (1952)
Anton Gajdošík - photo from criminal military service (1952)
zdroj: z archívu pamätníka

Anton Gajdošík was born on July 23, 1933 and comes from a village Horný Moštenec. Yet in his young age he became a witness of local events of the Slovak National Uprising in Povazšká Bystrica and its surroundings. His parents Valent Gajdošík and Katarína, née Galomišová, were farmers and owned 10 ha (25 acres) of land. In times of the communist takeover and growing pressure of collectivization, his father refused to enter the JRD (Joint Agricultural Cooperative). Due to this fact he was imprisoned for not meeting the compulsory delivery quotas, so-called contingents. Based on these circumstances and negative cadre evaluation, in years 1953 - 1955 Anton Gajdošík underwent the penal military service in units of the PTP (Auxiliary Technical Battalions). He served it in Petřvald, working hard in Mine of Július Fučík.  As it was dangerous work, he had suffered from several injuries. After the release he got employed as a worker in JRD Horný Moštenec, where he stayed until his retirement in 1991. In 1959 he got married to Jozefína Kudlová and together they had four daughters. Nowadays he lives retired in Horný Moštenec.