Ladislav Kafka

* 1929

  • “I remember, once my mother came. Women were talking about aryanization in the store. It was quite hot topic back then. She asked my father why couldn´t we do that too. She mentioned the Arco (a therapeutic centre in Trenčianske Teplice, note ed.). I have never seen my father so angry like at that moment; completely mad he was. He told her: ʻStop it! And I tell you, it was the last time you mentioned aryanization in front of me! It´s a larceny!” That was his attitude towards it. Then he said: ‘It´s not normal to do such things. What if they evicted you just because of being a Catholic?’ That was my father´s stand.”

  • “There were four or five Germans.” “In the house?” “No, on the way from Teplice, since there was a stone pit and they had their position there. From this place they dragged telephone wires on the ground leading to the stone pit from their commandership. Some citizens from Trenčianske Teplice always used to cut these wires to them. There was one old man, old soldier, a member of the Volkssturm, who used to go and repair it. He had such a stick with a loop using it to find where it was cut. It was always at the same spot. When he was about to repair it for like the sixth time, he called out people living in the nearby house. He said he didn´t mean it wrong, but he didn´t want to do it over and over again like a fool. Back then I already understood German. They were trying to discover who was cutting it and everybody kept denying. After all, they found out there was one lady, who used to cut it not in front of her house, but theirs. She worked as a birth assistant in Trenčianska Teplá. The German said, if that action was going to repeat, he would have to report it and they might have been shot down for sabotage. So she stopped, since her neighbors told her to kick her ass if she didn´t. They said she could have done it in front of her house, but not theirs, thus she stopped doing it for good.”

  • “I could see that everywhere I came. Not right on the next day, but gradually. One mate from Lúčky, his name was Papan, was among them as well. I noticed that when they talked to one another, they stopped immediately as I entered the room. And it was silence. I knew they had to plot something against me. I realized it later, that I being an assistant of the commissar was very suspicious for them. They thought I was a traitor employed to be among them. I realized I had to solve this, so I told them: ‘Are you insane? I can see you stop talking when I come. I am not any spy or rat, or anything else. I am the same PTP soldier like you are. Politically unreliable, dismissed from studies, arrested, and so on.’ And then it stopped.”

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    Žilina - Hotel Polom, 06.05.2017

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In life I learnt to trust in providence of the fate

Ladislav Kafka (1950)
Ladislav Kafka (1950)
zdroj: z vojenskej knižky pamätníka

Ladislav Kafka was born on December 21, 1929 in Trenčianska Teplá. Since his father was a local secretary of the Hlinka‘s Slovak People‘s Party, in his young age Ladislav was formed by this party line. After the war in 1946 he was arrested due to protesting and a leaflet agitation for restoration of the Slovak State. He spent 6 weeks in prison. Because of political reasons he was dismissed from Trenčín grammar school as well as from the later medical studies. In 1950 he was drafted to correctional military service in Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). In later years he worked as a wages clerk. He got involved in innovations of the work standardization, rationalizing of the wage system, and he was a vice chairman of the ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement) for the brickwork industry. Since 1989 he lives retired in Žilina.