Vladimír Jonáš

* 1929

  • “There weren´t any military quarters. We were lodged in wooden barrack, having no heating, no furnace, no toilet. One toilet was in the middle of the barrack and next to it there was the only well. No warm water, no heat at all. We had clothes, stogies, military work clothes with hats. That was our whole gear. And two blankets. One to be placed on the straw and one to be used as a cover blanket. There were gaps on the barrack wide as a finger. When a man woke up in the morning, he had stripes of frost all over his blanket. Just like zebras. It was something horrible. The one who never experienced it, won´t believe something like this could have happened yet in 1951...”

  • “As the communists took over, they requested people would betray and deceive each other. This was their ideology. For instance, nothing ended for me by finishing the military service in PTP. I returned, and two and a half years later there was a legal proceeding, home inspection. They searched through everything, even though I lived in an assigned flat of the local forestry. So they had nothing to search there at all. They even looked under the carpets. Right before Christmas they took me from the forest district and yet on the next day in the evening I was released from the police office in Handlová.”

  • “Some of them were arrogant. Others felt inferior if talking with us; they deemed us to be just plebs. No one cared I graduated from the Forestry School with distinction. I was a cipher for them. And thus I began to behave like nobody afterwards…”

  • “He wasn´t in a commanding function, he was an intellectual advisor, propaganda. However, when he deemed someone unreliable, the special unit knew how to deal with such a man immediately. Some were evicted, some, as for example Jews, were sent to the camps, others were liquidated.” “So he only used to initiate it and the work was done by others?” “Yes.”

  • “I went from a shop and one village idiot tried to place a metal trash can on the road. So I took him and pushed away along with the can. I asked him whether he was stupid, whether he wanted to draw level with a tank this way. They could have hurt him as they shot at people near the post office. One woman was injured there by Russians back then. They also tried to throw stuff at them…”

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    Handlová, 07.02.2016

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Surviving to the detriment of others. It was the real idea of that time!

Vladimír Jonáš (2016)
Vladimír Jonáš (2016)
zdroj: z natáčania pamätníka v Handlovej 31. januára 2016

Vladimír Jonáš was born on March 30, 1929 in Krupina. He had two siblings. His father Emil Jonáš and his mother Vilma Jonášová, née Dlhošová, owned sawmill and a shop with building material. During the war, the Jonáš family lived to see the occupation of Krupina by German as well as Soviet troops. In 1948 the father´s sawmill happened to be nationalized and the family had to move out of their house. In 1951 Vladimír graduated from the Secondary Forestry School in Banská Štiavnica. In the same year he received call up papers to enter the penitentiary facilities known as PTP (Auxiliary Technical Battalions), where he spent two years. After his return Vladimír got married and gradually worked hard to get employed in Prievidza Forest Enterprise. However, here he had to face a double accusation attempt of larceny of the socialist property, which was never proved to be true. During his whole life he experienced various visits from the State Security´s side. After leaving the Forest Enterprise he worked at different positions in Handlová mine. Here he stayed until he retired in 1989. In his pension age he was employed as a worker in the village of Počúvadlo. In years 1995 - 2009 he worked at the Municipal Office in Handlová. Since then he lives on pension with his wife Anna Jonášová, née Kanianská.