Mária Mištinová

* 1932  †︎ 2022

  • „They brought the medicines, they sent them from Bánovce, as well as some familiar ones. They sent it secretly from the doctor and started giving me the medicine. That was, I know we had a small Christmas tree on the table and that "We'll make a little tree," mom says. So we started doing it. So we the tree was so small, but there wasn't even a needle there. It was also poor, nothing on the tree, nothing under the tree. Also poor. Tears flowed all evening, we didn't feel it was Christmas. Father was not yet home from the mountain, we had no idea where he was or if he was still alive. Those were the most difficult days, sad. That was something to remember. Although there was something nice there, the nice things were not enough.“

  • „It was already too late, there was already shooting there after that. It was already very difficult there, brother didn't know brother anymore, the father of the children... I would call it that it already happened. It was a terrible time. So that this never happens again among the people, because that is something terrible. It is simply not possible to survive. A person survives it, but loses himself completely. It doesn't really have a price for life.“

  • „There was such an incident, I also wrote about it in the newspaper, that around six in the evening, small planes carrying paratroopers flew. At that time we also went to the mountain, it was in the mountain. They were running them there. And they were prepared by Ukrainians. They were training for commanders. My father was on guard duty at the time and I know that I went up, that I wanted to be there before the plane took off, so I went. Well, this Pola then went as if giving an order, repeating to my father, because he was the commander at that time, father. So he had to give him everything he knew and so on. The commanders of the Žižka brigade actually met there. Until then, it was just here and there, a tailor and various other workers who also wanted to make a living. Here and there they got some food, milk and so on. That was terrible, today when I think about it, everything makes me tremble.“

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Jacovce, 16.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:32:21
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th century
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We took our things from home for a week, but didn‘t return home until nine months later

Historical photo of Mária Mištinová Dřinekova
Historical photo of Mária Mištinová Dřinekova
zdroj: Witnesses archive

Mária Mištinová, nee Drineková, was born on November 22, 1932 in Hluk na Morave. Her father, Cyril Dřinek, worked as a builder and mother Mária was a housewife. The witness had an older brother, Eugene, and a younger brother, Mirko. Father Cyril was one of the main organizers of the Slovak National Uprising in Bánovce nad Bebravou. The day before the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, the whole family left Bánove and came to Slatina nad Bebravou. They hid in the house of an evangelical pastor. However, a week later they were already traveling to Závada pod Čiernym vrchom. There, the witness also met the partisan commander Teodor Pola, who commanded the entire brigade. In Závada, she and her mother were preparing a field hospital for the wounded. She remembers the fleeing Jews. They hid in the bunkers where she fell ill. She relayed messages and brought food to the people in the bunkers. A reward of 50 000 crowns was offered for catching the family of Cyril Dřinek. Later they traveled to Miezgoviec, where they lived with an old woman. They also spent Christmas there. Partisan commanders tasked her with obtaining false identification cards. The witness fell ill again. In February, they hid their brother and his friend from the Germans in the house. They raided the village. The brother was already 17 years old and was in the mountains with his father. In mid-February, they traveled through Jankov vŕšok, where they witnessed the burning of partisan bunkers. The sick witness was transported in a wagon, under straw, across the Slovakian-Czech border to Hluk na Morave to her grandmother. There she saw the end of the war. After the war, she graduated as a teacher, married Anton Miština and gave birth to two children. She devoted her whole life to children as a teacher of the Slovak language and playing the piano. Her father was one of the authors of the Slovak National Uprising mound on Jankov vŕšok, where she went every year. However, she was not politically involved. In August 1968, she could not believe that the country was occupied by the sons of those who liberated us. In year 2021 she lived in a social services facility in Jacovce. She wrote a book of memories about the war and the Slovak National Uprising. Mária Mištinová died in 2022.