Imrich Donath

* 1947

  • "Then on the 21st we received a fraternal visit, and then I decided not to return. I wrote a letter to my parents and the letter arrived. Then I sent more letters from abroad and they did not arrive, but this letter arrived. That I will not return, that I do not yet know where I will go, but that I will not return and I will certainly stay outside. My parents reacted as I thought: Mom cried and Dad said, 'at least one kid in the West.' That was such a typical reaction. So I wondered where I was going. I'll tell you exactly how I made my decision. August 21 was Wednesday. Those were the first demonstrations then, I learned about them and I was there. And at seven in the evening, there was an organ concert in Stephansdome. I never liked the organ, I admit, never. I went there because I knew I would be able to think there. I felt good. I'm not musical, I really like culture, but not music, because I'm not very good at it. Nevertheless, I went to Stephansdom because I saw a tall Stephansdom, one is so small there and one has to be quiet because there is a concert. So he can devote himself to his thoughts entirely. Because when there were demonstrations, it was not possible. So I thought about what I was going to do. I went inside - I didn't know what I was going to do, I went out and I knew I would stay in the west. I haven't been twenty-one yet. "

  • "I learned that from an interview with Spielberg, I learned a lot from there. Because my parents said nothing. This is typical of my generation, my parents, unfortunately, did not say anything and we did not ask anything. Each of us - and not just my sister and I - my generation, we had that feeling or a notion, and we were told not to ask, so we didn't ask anything. There were two different poles: parents, who talked a lot about it and burdened their children with it, parents who kept talking about it: 'I didn't survive the concentration camps for you to get a three in mathematics,' and stuff like that, we had that also. Or the other extreme was the one I had, that my parents didn't say anything. We knew nothing. We didn't ask. Somehow we each of us... and not just us, but my whole generation - we didn't ask. I learned a lot from that interview with my mom with the Spielberg Shoah Foundation. There was one of the things when they took them from Tešedík and first brought them to Šala. At that time, there was such a small ghetto in Sala. The question for my mother was, 'Do you remember those degrading gynaecological examinations? My mother was silent, I thought, she didn't know what was the interviewer talking about, but suddenly she said: "It was Mrs Horwathova, I recall the name, she was very humiliating", etc...

  • "I grew up in such a pious family that I did not write in the fifth grade in Sala on Saturday. It was possible to get an exemption. At that time, the school was here for six days. I didn't write on Saturday, that's how it was. Everyone knew that we were Jews, we stuck to it, we had kosher, and then in the '50s and '60s, it was not easy to adhere to the rules of kosher in Czechoslovakia. But my father kept telling me, 'My son, be a proud Jew. If you are not proud, you are still a Jew. So you better be a proud Jew. 'And I tell my children too. They also grow up in this spirit. Stay proud, Jews. ”

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    Frankfurt, 02.11.2020

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He grew up in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s as a proud Jew

historical photography
historical photography
zdroj: Archív pamätníka

Imrich Donath is a descendant of a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family from Sala, where he was born on December 13, 1947. Both parents survived the concentration camps. After February 1948, the communists nationalized their family wholesale and vinegar factory. Most of the relatives moved to Israel, due to the health problems of Imrich and his sisters, his parents did not want to leave. His father found a job as a warehouse manager. The family also lived a religious life during the 1950s and 1960s, despite the fact that the father was unemployed for two years in the late 1950s. Imrich went to Galanta every Sunday for the Jewish religion lectures and in 1960 he celebrated a bar mitzvah in the Bratislava synagogue. After the abolition of the synagogue in Sala in 1958, a minyan took place at home at Donaths, where they transferred a box with a Torah. He was raised to be a proud Jew and did not experience anti-Semitism as a young man. In 1965, he began his studies at the University of Economics in Bratislava, he spent the third year in Warsaw, where he experienced March student protests in 1968. During the summer holidays, he spent August ‚68 in Vienna on a language course, where he was caught in the news of the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, and on that day he decided to emigrate. He left Vienna for Frankfurt, where he was promised a scholarship. A year later, he was visited by his father, who was considering coming to Germany with his wife (Imrich‘ mother), but they already felt old. In 1975, the Communists evicted their parents from their birthplace. Imrich visited Šala for the first time after emigration after ten years, after redeeming himself from the state union with Czechoslovakia. After November 1989, he co-founded the German-Czechoslovak Economic Association to support economic transformation. In 2002 he was appointed Honorary Consul for the Land of Hessen and in 2008 he became an honorary citizen of the town of Šaľa. Until 2015, he worked as an insurance agent for Allianz. By organizing art exhibitions, he actively advocates for the visibility of Slovakia, and ist Jewish history and present. He is also involved in the Jewish religious community in Frankfurt.