"I did not know what it would be about. How it will go. When I arrived at the square, it started to rain. It was cloudy weather. There were about 2 000 people in groups in the square. Among them were the cops. It wasn't organized at all. In the park opposite Carlton, people prayed by candlelight. We were waiting for what would happen. Around five o'clock arrived police cars - yellow and white with the inscription VB. Someone was talking through the amplions, dissolve the assembly and some such commands were heard there. It was all in chaos, too. People didn't agree. Everyone was waiting for what would happen. It was practically a silent demonstration. Suddenly, the cars started to run into people. So a few people and I sat on the hood so they wouldn't see where they were going. But then they started running there with rifles and it got sharper. So I departed for safety, because I was afraid. "
"It was clear to me that the HZDS would win the election. Therefore, when they came to me as I am mayors, they were looking for people to political functions. Until then, I was independent. I was also independent of the VPN and I was never organized. They came to me to offer me a position as a candidate for the National Council. They were representatives of the HZDS from the district of Bratislava 4. One of them then became a member of the National Council, but so insignificant. They were looking for people, and I was the mayor of a fairly large part of the city. They offered me a position and I went because I thought I would get into parliament. By law, I should get there. I was about the seventeenth in the candidate. I was pretty high. After the parliamentary elections, it turned out that I was among the alternates. And since those before me became eight or nine ministers in Mečiar's government. As a result, seats in parliament became vacant. I was supposed to go there as a alternate, that is, with that group, only, unfortunately, Mečiar changed the law as soon as he got to the head of parliament. So the alternates were determined by the party. The election did not go in the order of the candidate, as it was before. He changed the law and put his people in there: the eight-nine alternates. "
"We went to Yugoslavia, to the Slovak village Selenča. A large purely Slovak village. We stayed there with farmers in Christian families. They loaded us back with books from Canada. I didn't know what to do or to refuse, to throw away. They did not know what problems were at us. Finally, we had a suitcase full of dirty laundry over the books. Like after a vacation with children. So I decided to entangle the books, literally, in the laundry. I should have handed them to the nuns from Trnava through an intermediary. I didn't even want to know through whom and whom , to not to get someone involved. They just loaded me there. I solved it this way and we went. Suddenly we went through Hungary and in Komárno I suddenly think I'm already in the police cell. Hungarian soldiers on a bridge at the border searched the Czechoslovak cars. It was impossible to escape because we were on the bridge. So I just prayed in my mind. The four children slept in the back seat. I saw that customs control threw everything out. We came to check and the soldier spoke Hungarian. So I pretended I didn't understand. He showed me to open the suitcase, and it could not be incomprehensible. I opened the trunk and suddenly my four children in the back seat started crying. The soldiers looked down, saw four small children, closed the trunk and released us. So I crossed the border. "
"He called to our home, to my Dad. I don't know where he got phone number from. He said I should come to his exam. We were supposed to have the exams closed by August 31st, and he gave me an extraordinary date on September 1st. I came to him.The study scripts, what he wrote, I had learned. I even knew the safety coeficients — seven-digit numbers so he wouldn't surprise me. We were alone in the office. He asked me a simple question. What pulley machine is in the picture. I will not forget that until death. And he wanted to know how many times it's a pulley transmission. I knew that right away, but I thought it was going to be a trap. Why would he ask me such a simple question, after all he threw at me. After a long pause, I said it was a five-fold transfer because I didn't see another solution. He took my index and said that if I knew this two years ago, he wouldn't have to bother with me. And he wrote me a three in the index. "
"They have crossed the border. They did it. But the patrols caught them and started firing at them. There were three of them. One was shot right in the water. One of them was injured by shot, they let the dogs out after him. They dragged him into the boat. This man ,Dlubač, I don't know how, got to the other side. No one knows whether he was shot, wounded or what happened, because it was confidential. His parents only received a message from Vienna that his son's body had already been found in Austria, that he was in Vienna and that they should come for him. So it was agreed between the states that he was locked in a tin chest. The parents were not allowed to see him. The body was escorted by soldiers to their birthplace. They kept watch at the funeral to keep the coffin not open. "
"They lay down in grenade pits by the river and waited for the boat. When the boat arrived, the three soldiers shined on it and shouted Stop! But the five people jumped on the boat, the Austrian wrecker did not get out and returned. I don't know if the boat was overloaded or just caught on barbed obstacles. there was a mess of confusion and the soldiers started firing at them. The wrecker had a grenade and threw it where the shooting came from. It ended up that in moment came GAZs and V3Ss full of soldiers to our alley. Whreas we lived on the corner, they asked my father for a cart. We had a cart in which we drove hay for goats and hares.They said it was small and they took other bigger cart from a carpenter who used to be about three hundred meters away. My father and I waited behind the gate to see what would happen. After about half an hour, they brought the corpses. We only found out by seeing the soldiers pushing the cart through the gate. There were some bodies covered with blankets. Based on the fac t that military baganjas stuck out of it, we concluded that they were border guards. "
Marián Jurčák was born in 1947 in Devínská Nová Ves. He grew up in the border area of Morava, where Czechoslovak and Polish citizens tried to emigrate during socialism. He graduated at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Slovak University of Technology. He was on compulsory military service in Šumava, where in 1971 during the normalization process, officers and colonels were released. At that time, he was given four staff positions at once. He worked as a constructor at the Research Institute. While working in Tatramate in eastern Slovakia, he married in 1975 and returned to Devínská Nová Ves. He started working at the General Directorate of Strojsmalt. He met with dissident Tono Mitaš. He translated three Croatian books about Medjugorje into Slovak and once smuggled Canadian books from Croatia to Slovakia. In 1985, on the occasion of the 1100th anniversary of the death of St. Metod, the largest demonstration for religious freedom in normalized Czechoslovakia took place in Velehrad, Morava, where Marián and his family also took part. As a witness, he was also part of the Candle Demonstration in 1988 and the protests during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. After the Velvet revolution, he became the first mayor of Devínská Nová Ves. In the 1994 parliamentary elections, he candidate for the HZDS. He did not get into the National Council after the change in the law. After the revolution, he started a business. Today he is retired, but he is still the chairman of the Chess Club STRELEC in Devínská Nová Ves.
