Zeev Miller

“The partisans told us that the Russians came to Brezno and that they got an order to join the Red Army. It was about fifteen kilometers. There were about a thousand Jews in Kaliště a v Baláže. We told them: ‘We can’t stay here, we must come with you. The Germans would come and kill us.’ They agreed, but on condition that we would follow them, but not to go with them. It was very cold, we went through Chabenec. A lot of people died, they weren’t strong enough. But the majority made it. I remember that my parents had lost their way. I went in advance without baggage. I came to the final destination and I didn’t find them, so I went back. I knew the way, but they didn’t believe me, I was eleven years old. The Jews had a lot of baggage and they were throwing it away. We could find a piece of baggage every ten meters. We didn’t know the way, but you could tell it by the baggage. They followed me and we came back in a moment. It was a great feeling, after so many years, to enter the grounds that had been liberated.”

“Our kibbutz had established a chemistry factory producing paints and tar. It was the war, the embargo and nobody could import. We were one of the first kibbutzes to have their own industry. Then we sold the company. It was a mistake. The factory had about two hundred employees and that was forbidden. We were socialists, we had to work on our own and not to employ and exploit workers. Everything has changed. Nowadays we have three hundred workers, but in new factories. The contemporary factories were established later. I worked in the factory we sold. Kfar Masaryk had sold the factory to Histadrut association, which was linked to the labor union’s headquarters. They had their own industry and they had the biggest bank in Israel, Hapoalim. […] The labor union had finally sold both the bank and the factory, so it came to a private owner. At that time we couldn’t sell it to the capitalist enemy. This is how it was.”

“We lived in Michalovce until April 1942, when the deportations began. Two days before, we left to my grandfather’s house in Stropkov. He had a sleepers manufacture. He got a presidential pardon from the Slovak Government. There were thousand people acknowledged that they contributed to the industrial development of the state. When the police came for an inspection, we were warned in advance and e went to hide in the rye. The Christian Slovak children were then calling at us: ‘Jews to the rye.’ They knew that we were hiding when they were looking for us.”

“In summer 1989, just before the Velvet Revolution, a certain Czechoslovak communist official came to Kfar Masaryk. He came to our kibbutz to try to revive the connections with the kibbutz movement. He had a lecture, I wasn’t here, but my wife went there. And she told him: ‘It is all so nice, what you’re talking about here, but I was born in Czechoslovakia and I would like to see my country again. Why can’t we come to visit Czechoslovakia?’ And he said that he would send a letter and they will send him the visa. So we sent a letter and we got the visa. You could visit the country, but that meant to come to the airport and travel under the surveillance of the police. We had the visa and we could go by car from Vienna to Bratislava. At the border they told us: ‘We have never seen anyone from Israel. Tell us what life looks like, and about the Israeli wars.’ They never heard about Israel. We were the first Israelis they had seen. The kept us for about two hours and asked us questions. We came to Bratislava and it was strange. When we didn’t sleep in the hotel, we had to report at the police where we had slept. That was the first visit after forty years, in 1989. And people were already not so afraid to talk openly. They told us: ‘We want a change, but not as big in Hungary.’ They didn’t know that everything is going to change in a few months.”