Peter Salner

* 1951

  • "Well, now I'm going back to the sixty-eighth year. How old were you, seventeen? Sorry? How old were you, seventeen? Seventeen, seventeen, and it was just for me, it started a little earlier, in the sixty-fourth, the sixty-fifth, books appeared, and in the newspapers reports about things that had been ... didn't exist or were just interpreted as otherwise, so I swallowed it up a lot and all these things affected me. Then when she came, the twenty-first of August came, so it was also such a beautiful piece of news, because my mother told me in the morning. She woke me, but not at night, but in the morning about seven-thirty, that the Russians came, I said it was bullshit, and I wanted to sleep. My mother said that yes, they came, so I got out of bed and my father's sister Hedviga was visiting us at the time. I don't even know, she lived in Prague already, her husband died and her only daughter Lyda lived in Prague, so she followed her to Prague and then after a while she was visiting us and she was experiencing it terribly. And also that when it was heard, we used to live at Palackého and it was close to the university, close to SNP Square, so when it was shot, it was terrible to hear there and she first whenever the shooting started, she crawled under the table, I was absolutely fascinated and I was also sorry that my father was at work that he didn't see it, he would probably have a great fun from this, and then she figured it out, but that if they bombed, it's not safe under the table, so she stood under the door, under the door frame, and it was a lot of funny for me. Of course, I was banned from leaving the house, which I disobeyed, and together with this Paľo, my friend and future brother-in-law, we went to look outside. And the first strong experience that I have, and which still fills me with indignation, the car was walking in the opposite direction on our street. As I was very upset with this, you can see how it didn't tell me what was going on. And we went to SNP Square, which was full of tanks and full of Soviet soldiers, mainly Asian soldiers were there, and it seemed to me that they were mainly these, and we tried to convince them in our “wonderful” russian that there is no counter-revolution, there is no , and that they have to go home and they have debated with us about the counterrevolution. There are just such normal things, and I remember mainly that always ... because once in a while the shooting sounded, I was terribly scared and I fought with myself so, not to show it and I tried like nothing was happening. Then the situation stabilized, after a few weeks rather, than days."

  • "I was fine with my parents. Basically, we went to the swimming pool in the summer, to Tehelné pole. They didn't teach me anything. I mean now, from a sports point of view, from a point of view like that, so I ... apart from swimming, I was taught to swim and I really swam well and I like it, but cycling, skating, skiing, I didn't learn all that at all, or like cycling, after thirty. A classmate met me when I traveled from research on the bus and said that we were talking about you, and that you're such a baneberry, you haven't even learned to ride a bike yet to be different from the others, so I came home, it was Friday and I knew cycling on Sunday, but those are the details. Then I went to school on Palackého, I had it opposite of our house, which on the one hand was very comfortable, but on the other hand quite unpleasant, because my curiousness mother, who survived just hungry, I mentioned… and suffered from the idea of ​​a hungry man, so when I didn't eat all breakfast or didn't drink my tea or cocoa, so she was willing, able to bring it to class, so it was just a huge shame and unpleasant. After sixty years, I met a classmate who reminded me of it, so if nothing else, I stayed in their memory thanks to this. I grew up as an enthusiastic pioneer and I longed to be a pioneer in my early childhood. I am in the photos, I brought them, there is one photo where I am three, four years old with a pioneer scarf, I am very happy to smile into that lens and I have such an incident that I remember after these sixty-five, six, seven years that I was in a pioneer palace with a pioneer scarf and an older boy or a young man came, took the scarf from me, saying that I did not have the right to wear it yet. I roared like a small baby because they took my pioneer scarf, so then, when I finally became a pioneer, I was very proud of it. It passed me by to a pretty large extent in those sixties, when the negative face of the regime simply appeared, but it didn't influence me very well. I said that my parents protected me from these external influences like that, so… I was politically mature. ”

  • "I may ask, so can I get you back a little more? You go so fast. I'll give it back a little bit. Of course. You mentioned, I would still ask completely about the family, that is, the families of your parents. They were pious families, or rather less pious, or how they actually functioned. I wanted to come to that, but fine. Well. My mother's family, as far as I can tell, was jewish, but absolutely not pious. Father's family. I have a photograph of the old, great- grandfather David, which shows that he was a pious orthodox Jew, but my grandfather, my father's father. I have photos, and I brought them here, where it is already evident that he is a well ordered burgher who, in appearance, is not different in any way from the trends of the majority society. He has a beard, but he doesn't have a chin, he doesn't wear a hat, something like that. They were simply aware of their Judaism, but they were not orthodox. Finally, the grandmother is buried, she survived the war and is buried… She died right after the liberation in Banská Bystrica and it was not an orthodox community. And the father also reported to the neologists. Both parents are finally buried in Bratislava in a neological cemetery. As far as I know from hearing, my circumcision also realized neologically, not orthodoxly, so I also subscribe to this neological tradition, but not to orthodoxy. Paradoxically, again, when we are at this religious part, the father, he was a very strong Jew. Once again, he was not a strong believer, but he had a very strong Jewish mindset, he was very pro-Israeli. Basically, in my opinion, he was one very strong zionist who had never seen Israel in his life, so I was thwarted them, by being born, they just didn't get there. And my mother's family, I mentioned that she was neological, but now I'm coming to the paradox ... not neological, but not pious. Now I come to the paradox. My father was involved in a Jewish community, Bratislava. In the 1960s, he became a member of the auditing commission of the Jewish religious community, then the board of directors of the Jewish religious community, and for one or two terms, he was also chairman. The Bratislava municipality declared itself more than orthodox, but it was not as strictly orthodox as it was declared, and I say, paradoxically, a neological Jew, he became the chairman of the municipality. "

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    ateliér Holubník, 26.10.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:21
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

„At home, we received a very strong jewish consciousness, but a weaker religious consciousness.“

Contemporary photograph of Peter Salner, number four.
Contemporary photograph of Peter Salner, number four.
zdroj: Sandra Polovková

Peter Salner, currently a well-known historian, scientist and ethnographer, known not only for his rich work, but also for his markedly strong relationship with the Jewish community, was born on March 1, 1951 in Bratislava, into a jewish family. The memorial is the second child in a family, because he has an older brother Juraj. Both of his parents survived a labor camp in Sereď. His father, who was officially called Vojtech Salner, was also known as Karol, Martin, Móric or Jozef and even had two dates of birth. The date accepted by the authorities was February 27, 1894, but according to Peter‘s mother or other family members, he was born on August 31, 1893. He came from a peasant Jewish family that was engaged by woodcutter. Peter‘s mother Alica, who was called Marburgová before the wedding, was born on August 13, 1913 in Rimazavie, North Moravia, and belonged to a Jewish family from a better society. Because of the many differences between his parents, Peter believes that without their chance meeting in Sereď, he would never have been born. Peter as a child, lived on Palackého street, in the center of Bratislava. He attended an elementary school near the house, and was an excellent student with a good memory. Then he continued at the Secondary General Education School, at Vazovova street number thirty-eight. At first he had a dream of becoming a vet, but he became interested in archeology, so in 1969 he decided to send an application to this department. They didn‘t open it, but he got advice from his mother that the ethnography was something like that, so he signed up there. He successfully graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in 1974. After college, working as an ethnographer, Peter didn‘t have it easy. At first he had information that they were looking for someone at the People‘s Nutrition Research Institute, but it was just a mistake as they were looking for a stenographer. Subsequently, he obtained the position of a storekeeper in the Municipal House of Culture and Enlightenment. Shortly afterwards, in 1975, he heard from his tutor that they were auditioning for „contemporary research“ at the Ethnographic Institute. Despite his poor staff profile, he was accepted and still works at the academy. In the 1990s, he was invited by Martin Bútora to take part in a project about Holocaust survivors. He recorded more than a hundred interviews and became one of the first who started to do something like this in Slovakia. Peter is also a member of the Jewish religious community in Bratislava, and in 1996 he became the chairman of the Jewish religious community for the first time, he held a position until 2013. He became a builder because he transformed the community into a well-functioning community center. In 1970, he met his future wife, Eva, with whom he married in 1974, at the office. The originally planned jewish ilegal wedding, but in the end did not take place. Similarly, Eva comes from a jewish family. Their family became complete on June 2, 1977, when their son Andrej was born.