Mikuláš Škrek

* 1918

  • We were, we were seven hundreds people there, seven hundreds people. Very difficult, very difficult, difficult road. Very difficult road. I guess a lot of people got sick there. Maybe typhus. Two people, two people, were sick and died. We put them into the sea. We tumbled them into the sea. We tumbled them into the sea. Two books can be written, two books can be done. What, it was the English, the English did well that they got away and so they let us create our own state.

  • Miki, but they came to you in the synagogue, in Zlaté Moravce, people from Israel came and talked in the synagogue about Palestine and offered you to come to Israel. That was, that was very bad. The rabbi, the rabbi began lecturing. And those people were crying because they were talking. Well, kids were screaming about it. He wants to go to Palestine, there in Kibuc, they sleep together, they sleep together. Guys with women. With men yes, yes. That's not nice, that's not nice, Kibuc. And then he, the Rabbi, sent his son, who was also a Rabbi with children to Palestine. Because everything got worse. Czechoslovakia was so, very terrible with Hitler.

  • There were problems in Prague, in the Czech Republic, at the beginning the Germans came and had a big, big factory there, ŠKODA. Everything was made there, tanks and airplanes and everything. Then, and then the Germans came to Slovakia, the 39th. So we were afraid and wanted, we wanted to escort the whole family. But my father said, no, I was born here, I want to live here and die. (And I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Ester, I'll have it all on the record.) And that Hitler was in the 39th, in the last minute, the last minute I escaped with two sisters to Palestine.

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    Izrael, 10.04.2018

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„We thought the Germans would not come there and give us peace“

Mikuláš Škrek, was born on April 2, 1918, in the village Čarace near Zlaté Moravce, in the family of a businessman. He had four more sisters, Lucia, Edit, Irena and Magda. Mikuláš mentions his father as a very good man who helped people and was a great businessman. In Zlaté Moravce they owned a market, a cooperative farm and a barrelhouse. As a child, he attended the Folk School in Zlaté Moravce and later the grammar school in Bratislava. He also continued in his studies at the Business college, which was also based in Bratislava at Palisády forty four. During his studies he lived with his family. In December 1938, when he began to feel the deterioration of the situation, he tried to take his entire family to the Palestine. His father and mother and two sisters decided to stay in their birthplace. At the last minute, only he and his two other sisters, Edit and Lucia, fled together. His parents were eventually shot while escaping, and the remaining sisters perished in the camps. The journey to then Palestine took more than a month. There were more than seven hundreds people on board. They were without water for almost a month, they could only be cleaned with alcohol. Unfortunately, during the voyage, people also died. At the beginning, Mikuláš opened a restaurant and hotel in then Palestine. He sold both and currently has one larger hotel, managed by his son and daughter. In Israel, he met his future wife, Esther Gross, through friends. She also came from Slovakia, specifically from Komiatice. He always remembers her as an excellent and hardworking woman. Fortunately, he did not lose all his relatives in Slovakia. There are still seven families of Škrek in Košice. We are talking about a very wide branch in Košice. Mikuláš mentions that families of the Škrek also live in Levice and Banská Bystrica. He said all the time that until the advent of the war, he and his family had a beautiful life in Czechoslovakia.