“After the war, my father was well known in the electrical engineering sphere. He always had quite a high post, but not the salary. He was often called to England, America, France to become a director of the production factories, but he didn’t want to. He was a devotee of Masaryk, big Czechoslovak, and he loved it here. However, when he saw the communism, he said: ‘Well, I guess we go.’ We were supposed to leave to Stockholm, because he got a job there. One day before our departure, he was killed.”
“Everyone was making fun of me. Well, I was only twelve years old. However, then the German soldiers came to buy the tickets and I got completely broken! I sold them the tickets, but I was so terribly glad I survived it. Then I told the lady I was not going to come to sell the tickets anymore, as they could’ve taken me away.”
“My father was convinced that as soon as we’d come to Slovakia it couldn’t have been so bad, since he knew all what was happening in Germany. Thus we came to Bratislava in 1939. I started to go to school; my father got a job at electrical engineering enterprise Tungsram. There were people who protected him, because he was really smart. He had that job until the Bratislava’s bombing. Then he left to the Uprising and everything was over.”
Maja Šteruská was born into the Lipschütz family on May 1, 1933 in Prague. After the warlike regime of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established, the whole family moved to Bratislava, where Mária‘s father got a good job in Tungsram, receiving a dispensation of „economically important Jew“. Despite this fact, the family didn‘t avoid impacts of the anti-Semitic laws. They were forced to leave to Utekáč and after the Uprising was crushed, they had to hide in the hills and at local acquaintances. Fortunately, they managed to survive and return to Bratislava after the war. However, with the upcoming communist regime, the situation worsened again. Therefore, Mária‘s father planned leaving abroad - to Stockholm, which didn‘t happen. Her father never returned from his last business trip, as he died in until today unexplained circumstances. This brought Mária‘s mother into great depression and the father‘s sister Ružena took care of children, until they all grew up. „Bourgeois“ and Jewish origin were causing many problems to Mária even before applying to university. Finally, she was able to finish medical studies, get married, and have four children. She stayed working in Bratislava.
USC Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive
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