Štefan Jorík

* 1921

  • “We are people living on this Earth; we live here altogether and are obliged to mutually care for better prosperity, for better life of others. This is what we should devote ourselves to, what we should prefer to personal interests, to greediness and property. We should mind others. We even see it today, when the top world authorities are unable to communicate with each other and make mutual agreements. They rather pass messages to one another via media instead of sitting down and negotiating. Everything in this world can be solved, when people want to. But what if such top authorities are displaying a bad example and don’t know how to meet or talk. It’s the same in the family, too. If we want it to function, its members have to learn how to discuss things – the same could be said about any village, city, republic, or the whole world.”

  • “When the war was over and an American officer came here, to Myjava, he called all the families and their representatives who provided hiding to American pilots. He asked them, what kind of reward they wish for saving lives of these American soldiers. In unison they proclaimed, they wished for nothing and took nothing, indeed. Everyone considered it as a patriotic duty, and moreover, they also helped to save people’s lives. The human to human relationship is what we still keep missing, even today.”

  • “That morning, at the opening post office hours, the bank’s manager, my boss, told me, he had a bad news for me. He said I was refused my further postponement and that I had to enlist in the army. I told him not to worry about that, since I had many contacts between partisans and I was sure, I didn’t have to enlist. Here in Brezová, there was a partisan unit led by Ján Repta. ‘I am in touch with this unit and I won’t enlist!’ That’s what I claimed at eight o’clock in the morning, but I wasn’t aware of what awaited me. And at ten, suddenly, they announced mobilization.”

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    Horné Paseky, Slovensko, 29.04.2018

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Helping American airmen was considered as everyone’s patriotic duty

Štefan Jorík - youngster
Štefan Jorík - youngster
zdroj: Archív p. Joríka

Štefan Jorík was born on February 6, 1921 in Horné Paseky near Brezová pod Bradlom. After finishing the middle school and village high school, as eighteen-year-old he continued at a two-year business school in Skalica. In 1939 he took his first job in a bank in Senica. Thanks to his job, he was exempted from enlisting to the war. In January 1945, he was definitely called to enlist, but he never did so. He knew the partisans in the neighborhoods and they housed shot down American pilots at home. During communism he continued in his banking career - he worked in banking in various positions for 46 years (18 years in Senica and 28 years in Bratislava). He became the Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the State Bank, and majority of loans for the communist economy passed through his hands. For good work, he was rewarded by “Rad práce”/Order of Work.