Agnesa Langová

* 1946

  • I used to speak at those first meetings in the cinema there. It reminds me, as immodest as it may sound, of when I heard Emilia Vassáry speak, so soulfully and with tears in her eyes, as she did for her children, that she was standing there and that she was doing it. But that's exactly what I felt. I mean, for our children, that's how I do it and really everything, everything to make it work for them and to make that revolution really last and to this day I still try to help where I can. So that's where I had success at the time. But I found out in time, or after a while, that something not good was going on. That it was just out of the idea that I had, that my immediate colleagues had, the primary had. There were about four or five of us who were in the same boat, who understood each other, we were still meeting, we were also programming with each other what we were going to do and where, how to perform. And this is what happened, that one day I found that something completely, completely different started to happen, a certain group of people started to talk differently, to behave differently. And I'll never forget the moment, too, when I was standing in the hallway in front of the elevator, and suddenly a group came rushing in, led by - I won't name him. I got desperate then I got in touch with these friends and so I even wrote to them (I like to express myself this way with essays and writing) - I say, this is not what we wanted, this is not what I mean, what is going on? Well, we didn't know until gradually, that the HZDS movement was being formed, that there was actually a group of people breaking away from that VPN that didn't relate to us at all, we absolutely couldn't agree with them, and they were in a completely different boat.

  • When we were invaded (I say invaded) by the Warsaw Pact troops, it happened that I was in the very last weeks of pregnancy with my son Juraj. The troops arrived on August 21 and my son was born on September 12. And I was in my last year of medical school, and I had my state exams coming up. The way we were going through '68, it was amazingly difficult for us as a family, but also in terms of organizing all of this that was ahead of me. And when the troops came, we were living in this parental home and it was from the square right on. What they used to call Main Street. And that bunk house, that's where we stayed with my parents. We got married in '66. So in front of our windows, it was such a narrow street and it was a horrible noise. Terrible, unimaginable in the morning at five o'clock. And the noise and at that, both my husband and I woke up and I said, 'For God's sake, what's going on?' But at that time the Warsaw Pact troops were in our country on exercises and it was such a time that they were sort of leaving. So we didn't know what was going on, my husband as he was, in his pyjamas, ran downstairs and went out into the street and saw these tanks and all sorts of their stuff moving and soldiers. And he came upstairs and I said, 'Well, for God's sake, what's going on?' So was anybody in our generation thinking about the war or anything? We prayed that there wouldn't be. Well, and he says, 'But go on sleeping, it's only Warsaw Pact troops.' That was at five o'clock. At seven o'clock, my mother had already gone to work across the square and came back. And the only word she said, already with tears in her eyes, in Hungarian, that we are occupied.

  • Brother Šaninko's survival in the Budapest ghetto And he saw those daily murders and shootings of those Nyilash, those rampages, he saw his little brother dying, he starved terribly and this remained with him for his whole life, that he just avoided starvation and he liked to eat a lot. So that starvation it was really terrible. But one memory of my mother, when she said that you know how hard it could have been for my mother, when she said that (in Hungarian they were talking, I am translating): you have this food but you don't want to give me. That was something terrible and when they got somehow to eat, once in a while somebody would sneak them some food from their acquaintances. And once they got some almonds, that is such an episode. And now that's very nutritious. Or cocoa beans, I'm confusing it now - cocoa beans. And my mom divided it up for everybody, one piece for everybody every day. And she caught her mother rationing her grandson's her own portion as well. And terribly, this is what they said to me, this was such a shock to her as well, and they scolded that poor grandmother terribly, that, you know, it's your life that's on the line. 'No, that child takes priority.' So to the extent that even at the cost of their own existence, they were trying to provide that food for him as well. And it was even harder for him because by the time he was five, he was the only grandchild and they loved him very much - the first and only one. And those grandparents, the Sterns, who were in daily contact with him, and those relatives there in those New Chateaus, those Adlers, well, he was Shaninka, he was the flower, and they spoiled him terribly, with love. And then he got into these cruel conditions.

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    Bratislava, 28.04.2022

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They cannot take away from you only that which you carry in your head

They cannot take away from you only that which you carry in your head Agnesa Langová, née Sternová, was born to parents of Jewish origin on 31 March 1946 in Nové Zámky, which after the Vienna Arbitration fell to Hungary. Towards the end of the war, both parents found themselves in the ghetto in Budapest together with their eldest son. The second son, Peter, who was born during the war in June 1944, died on January 6, 1945, just two weeks before the liberation of the ghetto, at the age of seven months. Because of her Jewish background and her father‘s trade, Agnesa spent her childhood in solitude. After graduating from elementary school in Nové Zámky, which she attended from 1952 to 1961, she entered high school and passed her matriculation exam in 1963. She continued her studies at the Faculty of Medicine in Bratislava and graduated in paediatrics in 1969. At that time, she and her husband Tomáš Lang, whom she married in 1966, already had a son, Juraj, born in September 1968. On taking up employment after completing her university education, she was offered a position in the eye department because of the vacancy of paediatricians. Because of the reassignment, she had to take an additional attestation and apply to the Department of Health for a change in classification. She passed the first attestation examination in 1974 and the second in 1979 in Košice with Associate Professor Vesely. In the meantime, her daughter Miriam was born in 1971. She did not learn about Charter 77 until after the coup, but she felt the impact of her ignorance and lack of involvement in dissent when she applied for the primary after the coup. Both the Langs, including their children, were very involved during the Velvet Revolution in the hope of democracy. However, in the 1990s came disillusionment in the form of the domination of the party of Vladimir Meciar in and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, now from the right-wing extremist parties in parliament.