Miriam Adamec

“The bad times came, the holocaust. How I did I save myself? Most of the war I lived with my own documents. Most girls my age were sent to Auschwitz in 1942, officially to go to work in the Reich. They ´applied´ for work in Germany. At that time I was already living with my parents in my grand-parents´ place in Trenčín. They were purging Bratislava of Jews. Those who could leave left on their own, and those who could not were displaced. I was in Trenčín in a youth movement. All went to work in Germany,and of course I also wanted to go. My father told me: ´You are not listed in the register here in Trenčín, you are not going anywhere.´ And he really saved my life by doing this. (...) In 1944, when the uprising broke out, I became an illegal. I had false documents bearing the name Marie Novotná. I went to serve as a servant, which was quite complicated for me,because I was not used to house chores and I did not know how to do them. It was difficult, and adventurous. Almost all of my generation had it this way. Those who are here are those who are lucky. (…) After my return to Bratislava I found out that my parents were not there. I left them in the ophthalmology and the psychiatry ward, but they took them away.”

“My mum obtained some Aryan documents for me in the hospital. I became Marie Novotná and I began working as a maid in one household. The people I was working for did not know that I was Jewish. I had made up a story that I was from the east, they were already bombing the east at that time, and that I had run away and was looking for my aunt in Bratislava, but I could not find her and so on, this was the story I had ready. I was working in their home, peeling potatoes; that was more difficult for me. This cut on my finger began to fester, but I did not want to tell them. (…) This is my reminder of the Holocaust period, I have not been able to bend my thumb ever since. I stayed there for two or three months. A Gestapo man came- this family was denounced for hiding Jews. They did not find anybody in the house. They found only me. My ID card was well done, and I had a nice photo of myself in a blouse, pasted on it. This Gestapo man said:"Don’t tell me this is a photo of some house cleaner, of a servant. I objected: "What, me a Jew?" "Tomorrow you will report to the Jewish centre on Edel Street". (...) The family gave me an address of some people who might be able to help me. It turned out that this was the husband of my teacher. (...) Later it turned out that these people were hiding other Jews as well. That’s why I always had to peel so many potatoes. I did not have a clue, because otherwise we were only three people in that household." "And were they proclaimed the Righteous among the nations afterwards?" "No, they were not alive then, and they had no children, either.”