"Survival" a story written by our traveler Holly Nelson (daughter of Peter Gershanov)
when: March/April 2010
visited places: Bratislava, Trnava, Tatras, Bradlo, Breclav & Prague
Survival
“Rezacka Na Secku”…The Machine for Cutting Something
Olga Marko turned the crank on the Rezacka Na Secku…the machine that cut hay. That day, it also cut off the tip of my dad’s right index finger – the one that was positioned just below the sharp blade.
The year was 1944. The place was a small farmhouse just down the mountain from the famous and massive Slovakian monument known as the Bradlo. This farmhouse, one of 10 in the settlement, is located in a region called Kopanitza.
The family, Stefan and Suzannah Marko and their two children, Olga and Jan, risked their lives to save the lives of my father, Peter, his brother, Fred, and their mother, Antonia. 66 years later we met Olga; we stepped inside the farmhouse and straight into my father’s shoes and life a half century ago.
The Monkey Bar
The story begins in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia and my dad’s birthplace. He was raised in Trnava, a small town not far from Bratislava. His father, Leo Gershanov, was a successful winemaker who, along with his business partner, Mr. Wertheimer, owned a winery named “Veritas.” Their motto was “In vino veritas” (in wine there is truth). Trnava, known as the “Rome” of Slovakia for its many Catholic and Lutheran churches, was also home to two synagogues, a cobblestone town square and the narrow streets and alleyways that define old European cities.
Fast forward to April, 2010. My parents, my sister and her family and my family stepped back in history as we unearthed more than 60 years of my father’s past. Together we strolled Trnava’s town square with its modern pizzerias, cell phone stores and collectibles shops. My dad described how the teenage boys in Trnava would pour water on the cobblestone street in the winter, let it freeze and then get a running start as they slid across the ice. These days we’d probably ensure our kids wore helmets and wrist guards before taking such a risk on the ice. We searched for his childhood home and found the street, but no home. It had been replaced by a non-descript Communist-era apartment building and a paved playground.
Then we hunted for remnants of Veritas. We found the town hall lacked adequate records and was of no help. So our guides Peter and Dagmar, started asking questions of people who looked to be the right age. They found the equivalent of the “village elder,” and he led us directly to the winery. Now called the “Monkey Bar,” Veritas was long gone. But the courtyard this bar occupies remains unchanged from my father’s youth. And the moment my dad stepped into an adjacent courtyard, he could practically taste the wine. He pointed to a dumpster obscuring a padlocked door and announced this was the entrance to the Veritas wine cellar, dug in Roman times. The Monkey Bar’s owner pushed aside the dumpster and unlocked the door.
Once open, 12 of us descended through the pitch black down two flights of stone stairs. We saw where the wine had been stored. We heard about the case of very dear Tokaj wine my grandfather had put aside for my dad’s bar mitzvah…the bar mitzvah he never had and the wine that was confiscated by the Nazis. We learned about the Arizator, a non-Jew who was assigned to take over a business without providing any compensation to the Jewish owners. Mr. Bzduch was the Arizator assigned to Veritas and he actually provided my grandmother with some money after he took over the company.
And there was more. Mr. Wertheimer, the business partner, and his wife survived the war by hiding in a crypt in the local cemetery. Their twin daughters were taken from them, probably sent to Auschwitz, and perished. After the war, the Wertheimers converted to Catholicism and had another child, Sona Valentova. Today she is a famous Slovak actress who lives in Bratislava, ironically down the street from our guide, Dagmar.
The One-Armed Farmer
A bit of background…In 1939, my grandfather, Leo, decided it was too dangerous to stay in Czechoslovakia as he felt the Jews were in danger and war was imminent. He arranged to accompany a shipment of wine to Great Britain. Once there, he asked for and was refused permission to send for my dad, grandmother and uncle. He persevered by contacting cousins in Chicago. They sponsored by grandfather’s immigration to the US and Papa Leo began the process for the rest of the family to follow him. They reached the US Embassy in Budapest, Hungary in November, 1941. As they waited in their hotel for visas to clear, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The US had entered the war. My grandmother, dad and uncle’s visas were refused and they were forced to return to Czechoslovakia. My grandmother, in her 20s, cared for her two young boys, (Peter, age 7 and Fred, age 4) on her own, during the war.
My dad described wearing the yellow star that his mother sewed into every shirt and jacket. He talked about a carefree life before the war and a life of restrictions beginning in 1942 when the Slovaks paid the Nazis 500 German Marks per Jew who was deported. There were no deportations in 1943; however this practice resumed in 1944. His family remained in Trnava as long as they could. Then they counted on luck to save them.
Once they realized they were no longer safe in Trnava, my grandmother searched for a place to hide. Both boys were baptized in the Lutheran church as another precaution in hiding their identity. With the help of the church, my grandmother was referred to the Marko family who lived in a remote settlement in the Lower Carpathian Mountains. Stefan, a farmer, had lost an arm in a factory accident years before. He could no longer tend to his small farm and counted on his pension to sustain him, his wife and two young children. The money my grandmother paid them helped offset some of their expenses. This house, number 139 on a dirt road with no name, still stands.
April, 2010. We stood at the peak of a mountain on which the massive Bradlo monument is the tomb of General Milan Rastislav Stefanik, a Slovak hero. It is located and viewed miles and miles of countryside with farmland in every direction. We took off on foot, searching for some evidence of this settlement and the Marko’s home.
As luck would have it, we found a small grouping of farm structures and one woman standing in her doorway. Our persistent guides inquired about the one-armed farmer who had, perhaps, lived nearby. His was the house around the bend, we were told. And so it was. Just as Dad had remembered. A minute mud-brick farmhouse. In 1944 this house had no electricity. Water was carried in from a nearby stream. The outhouse was positioned just beyond the barn…this was a far cry from the grand and well appointed home my father had left behind in Trnava.
Inside, number 139 boasted two rooms. Bedroom to the left. Kitchen to the right. Attic through the kitchen. A new roof, new windows and new electrical panel all indicated someone was working on and perhaps living in the house. But no one was home. We walked around. Heard stories. Took photos. And were about to leave, resigned that we had found the house but would never know who lived there now.
The Tin Box
Again, luck was on our side. As we were filing into our van, a car pulled up the dirt road and four puzzled Slovakians eyed our band of 12 wondering who would be that interested in their home. Our guides explained who we were, and then we met Anna Marko, the youngest of Stefan and Suzannah’s children. She was born after the war, but remembered hearing the stories about the young Jewish mother and her two boys who the Markos saved. Anna and her husband were “fixing up” the farmhouse as their mountain retreat. She showed us the interior and introduced us to her grandchildren.
She ushered us to the barn beside the house, peered inside an old barrel and pulled out a tin box, filled with photos. There, amid the snapshots of various Marko family members, were two aging black and white prints…one was my parents’ engagement photo from 1957 with a Slovak notation written by my grandmother on the reverse. The other pictured my dad, his brother, father and mother. A chill ran up and down our collective spines. Here we were, amid the plum trees that lined the dirt road beneath the Bradlo, tracing history and living it.
Through Anna we learned that her older sister, Olga, lived in the small village of Breclav, just over the Czech border with Slovakia. One hour later, we met Olga, shared a beer in a local pub and heard stories about her experiences as my dad’s friend in the mountains.
Yes, she turned the crank that cut off the tip of dad’s finger. Unintentionally, of course. Her father escorted my father and grandmother by sleigh to the doctor in town. Uncle Fred was left behind so he might live if they were caught. The doctor stitched the remainder of dad’s finger (without anesthesia) and chose not to report this obviously Jewish family. Had he reported them, the Marko family, along with my dad, uncle and grandmother, would have been immediately executed.
She explained that my grandmother stayed hidden inside the house all the time, and that the boys, Peter and Fred, would play outside for an hour or two, and then retreat indoors. The neighbors did not know these visitors were Jews. And the Nazi patrols who questioned them were quickly quieted when Suzannah Marko explained that dad and Fred were her children.
Olga told us that her mother’s sister lived in the settlement and also hid and ultimately saved a Jewish woman. And she explained the sad reality that her grandparents were shot to death near the end of the war. She was unsure if the Nazis knew they were sympathetic to the Jews, or if the Partisans had killed them.
The Family Secret
Olga remembered that my dad’s young family appeared one morning, having arrived under cloak of darkness the previous night. She and her younger brother, Jan, knew they were Jews but were told to maintain the secret. And so they did. After the war, my grandmother sent packages to the Marko family as well as to the doctor who treated my dad’s finger in appreciation and gratitude for all their help in saving their lives.
One day, the letters and packages stopped. Olga had been searching ever since for my dad. In 1972, my grandmother, who never spoke of the war, died at the age of 60. She took with her the memories of this atrocious time in her life as well as the information about the Marko family. Until this day in the mountains, we had only remnants of random memories. Now the story was complete.
My dad’s two uncles and their families did not survive the war. Leopold and Robert Altmann, along with Robert’s family, were all deported to concentration camps and never came home. My great grandfather, Samuel Altmann, died before the war and his wife, Gabriella Altmann, was successfully hidden during the war. They were buried in a cemetery in their hometown of Cadca, Slovakia. Today, the Slovaks have built a park on the site of that cemetery, eradicating all evidence that Jews once lived in Cadca.
Indeed, in Trnava, a vibrant community of nearly 2,500 Jews in 1939 had dwindled to 150 survivors after the war with none living there today. The main sanctuary of my dad’s synagogue had been stripped of its pews to become a Nazi horse stable during the war. In 1945, my dad, uncle and grandmother davened with 18 survivors in a small school room adjacent to the sanctuary in their synagogue.
Today, the synagogue is the home to temporary modern art exhibits. There is no bimah. No ark. No Torah. It, like the town of Trnava, stands as a living memory of a Jewish community that is merely a repository of the fading recollections of a few survivors.
-- Holly Gershanov Nelson
