Judita Stavrovská

“The second transport from Liptovský Mikuláš took place on June 2, 1942. My mom and I were still in the Ružomberok hospital, when the Hlinka Guard came holding a list of people, including the names of my parents, who should have been deported away. It was only few days after I was born. At the time, there was one man, a doctor in the hospital, who refused to let us go. He said he couldn’t release a woman from the hospital, who was only two – three days after the delivery and had a newborn baby. So this way my parents avoided the transport. My grandparents were supposed to be in that transport too, but they had a so-called dispensation. My mother’s brother was a pharmacist and since during the Slovak State rule, this profession was considered as economically important, he and also his parents were granted the dispensation. However, it didn’t apply to my parents.”

“Together with other two families, the village people who saved us took us to the mountains, where we stayed in an underground bunker. There we lasted out the winter and spring of 1944/1945, until the Soviet Army came and liberated us. I still can’t explain myself how we were able to survive that. My sister was so weak because of the lack of food, that she was even unable to cry. However, it was quite fortunate, on the other hand, because the Germans used to walk above our bunker and if she started to cry, we would surely be revealed. Those people from Baláže saved us. They brought us food even though they themselves didn’t have much. My mom used to say they counted the beans, how many can eat each person in the bunker. My father always went to wash my diapers down to the stream, where at first he had to break the ice and only then rinse them. Simply, I still cannot imagine how could we survive that, but we did.”