Svatopluk Cagašík

"I made my first violin at the end of '66, before I went to the military service. I had a workshop at home, and at the end of the year, for the apprenticeship, we had to build an instrument. Of course it was within our means, it was playable, but it was nothing miraculous. Then when I did that master school, we built an instrument every year, and at the end of the third year we built an instrument and went into the master instrument rehearsals. The local master fiddlers had, everybody had an instrument, some had two, some had three, and we put one instrument each in there as well. There was a jury that scored the instruments, and when we got to a certain score, that instrument was classified as a master. Of course we each wanted to keep it, but we would have had to pay for it. And at that time some two and a half, three thousand [crowns], that was three monthly salaries. We couldn't afford that. So my instrument immediately traveled somewhere outside. I don't even know where, I never found it or encountered it again."

"He didn't like to talk about that [imprisonment in Buchenwald 1939-1945], he had a little bit of an advantage in that he already had a driver's license at that time and he was driving, so he was allegedly driving goods and transporting materials and things like that between the labor camps, and that's what happened then, that his friends had arranged with him that they would run away, and he didn't turn up because he was out driving somewhere, so they got caught and they were all executed and my dad happened to survive. That's why I'm here."