“The farmer we lived with was a widower and he lived with his former housemaid. They weren’t rich; they had horses, a cow, they didn’t have small animals. Once, my mom brought two cans of sardines with other groceries from the shop. Usually she didn’t buy such stuff, because it was expensive and it wasn’t really filling food. It was unneeded rarity. We opened it and offered the farmer, because we used to eat together sometimes, as well. My mom offered him the sardines, they were small, tasty. He took it, had a bite and yuk, he spilled it out. I felt so sorry because of that; he spilled the whole little fish on the floor. I wish I could have pounced on it and washed it. It was such bizarreness, but I felt so sorry. You know for me, the sardine was something exceptional.”
“I came from Bratislava and as a hungry student, I ate not only a small portion, but of course, a full bowl of mushrooms with eggs, because I loved it. I ate it with a piece of bread and at around 10 – 11 p.m. we had to go to the hospital. My mom called a taxi and in Štiavnica’s hospital there were more than 30 people sitting in the halls and throwing up. All were sick. All those, who didn’t have a drink. Those, who had a shot or wine, were OK. I was way in the worst possible state, since I ate probably three times more than what those people ate. My mom became accused that she wanted to harm Slovak technical intelligence and sacrifice her own child. I was in terrible condition, just throwing up again and again. So not the people there accused her, but later on, for alleged sacrificing of her daughter she was imprisoned for 2 weeks in Ilava remand prison. It was within the Slánský’s process. A Jew was an enemy. Luckily, at the symposium there was an academic Turzo, who was a zealous mushroom picker. He asked for a sample, because back then according to law, each restaurant had to set aside food samples for two days in a refrigerator. Just then he found out what had happened. The woodsmen prepared chemical spraying due to rabies found in fox.”
“Then the first fears came, we worried what would happen. I remember it was right in the evening after the Uprising was crushed, when we moved on such a farmer’s wagon. There were about 10 – 15 people, everyone carried their own things, I had a small backpack with some clothes plus 2 – 3 pieces of what I wore, since it was already the end of September. Thus I wore sweatpants and warm sweater with a jacket. We went through the night and we slept in such a barn somewhere on the way to Pliešovce. We went to Pliešovce, where we divided into several groups and we spread out in the mountains. We were there shortly, only for about a month, I guess. Then we found out from someone who came to the mountains to warn us, that down in the village, there were the Germans already. The army came to Slovakia and all except us left to the hill of Prašivá. We stayed at that one mountain settlement, we didn’t leave. Partly because my father had recently overcome a heart attack, so he was still quite ill and weak, and partly because, there was his mother with us, who wasn’t of good emotional health. Moreover, my six years older sister suffered a hysterical fit of crying that she wasn’t able to take a breath. They couldn’t calm her down, so my father said we stayed there, that we didn’t move on anywhere.”
Mariana Rybecká was born on July 4, 1935 in Banská Štiavnica. She is of a Jewish descent, although, she was baptized during the war. After crushing of the Uprising in September 1944, she and her family had to hide in the mountains of Pliešovce surroundings. After the war she finished secondary technical school of woodcarving and later, through distance learning she graduated from Faculty of Education of the Comenius University in Bratislava. She was in charge of technical-artistic clubs in Pioneer‘s Palace and later she worked for the Advertising Department of Institute for Health Education. She was married for two times. In August 1968 she visited her sister in Israel and returned home in times of the invasion of Warsaw Pact Troops in Slovakia. Nowadays she lives in Ohel David senior house.
