Emil Melioris

* 1931

  • “I have good memories on the Slovak State. My mom used to travel to Poprad almost every week. We had a cow and we used to make butter. When having some spare butter, mom would take it to the marked once a week. However, in those weeks when Jews were being taken away from Poprad, she brought home about 5 or 6 mugs. When she came home and father returned from work, he was so mad he broke up almost all of the mugs. ʻI don´t want to see this anymore! So you shall profit from how the Jews were slaughtered there?! And you shall have greed for some junk left after them?ʼ This I said just to demonstrate what kind of thinking my father had. My mom got such a reproach for those mugs she even cried back then. Our father was in his opinions very much alike me.”

  • “I was born on April 25, 1931. When being six years old I started to attend the elementary school. I did quite well and since I was one of the good students, my parents decided to send me to grammar school in my fifth grade. However, to my own detriment, in the sixth grade I joined an anti-state organization led by my schoolmates in Spišská Nová Ves. Sometimes I feel like laughing, other times like crying when I recall how naive we were. We thought that such common students can contribute to depose the regime by such actions; actions literally including also an armed rebellion. And in the end the group leader quarrelled with our teacher, who wanted to give him a bad mark, that he even threatened him with a gun. This way it all got out. At first, the leader was arrested. From the very beginning I criticized the fact that they blew up the railway near Markušovce using the stolen dynamite. Thus I completely lost all my will to cooperate in such things, as it was obvious it was not right to act this way. However, I got to prison in Košice, where we stayed on remand for about three weeks. I was in a solitary confinement in the State Security´s office, being all day so hungry that I had painful squeals in my ears, what was the worst punishment ever. I was so down, that thoughts like hitting the wall with my head were coming to my mind. So badly I wanted it to end. Yet, much worse thing was that I got expelled from school. I decided to deal with it by working. I got a job. There was a mine in our area and they were hiring workers quite gratefully. Thus I stayed there and worked in a mine for 15 years. Later I worked in a railway company for 13 years. I was also at the joint cooperative for a year, but it was so miserable, in such condition that I refused to work there. I said to myself that not money is worth of me labouring there. This cooperative didn´t have a chance. When I wanted my salary, I had to go and find the head of the district office. But we didn´t settle anything there either, so we passed to the Party´s district office. There we were given a cheque, which I brought to a bank. The bank could not use it for anything else, but our salary. It was really begging for own money from month to month and thus I quit and left back to Rudňany mine.”

  • “When the socialism became more developed by us, even the smaller farmers began to be affected. I felt a great injustice and inequality for some people who wanted to live better life and gained their property by hard work, and suddenly the society threw them into such a state of being at the very end of all. My father gradually became a kulak even with his 5 – 6 hectares of land. Having so many children. The smaller farmers had to face unbearable requirements: hand in meat, hand in pork meat. Moreover, when the pig-slaughtering took place for the household, even the fat had to be handed in; the pork fat had to be detached from the skin. We actually ate bacon that never tasted close to bacon. And that´s just a small detail. Step by step I happened to be finding ideas, I would say, being anti-socialist.”

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They called me Emil the Righteous

Photo from youth
Photo from youth

Emil Melioris was born on April 25, 1931 in Hôrka to parents Ján Melioris and Katarína, née Rákocziová. In 1937 he started attending the elementary school in Hôrka. Within years 1942 -1944 he went to school in the missionary house of The Divine Word Society in Nitra; later he studied at the grammar school in Spišská Nová Ves. When being a six grader at the grammar school, he joined a student-organised anti-state resistance group named Kampf, later (due to his initiative) renamed to Patriotes. However, when the group proceeded to militant actions such as robbing the dynamite storehouse and destroying the railroad near Markušovce, he left the group since he didn‘t agree with its agenda.  Nevertheless, in January 1949 he was arrested along with all other group members. The investigation has been instigated by a youthful indiscretion of one of the group leaders who threatened his teacher with a gun. Yet before the trial, he was expelled from the grammar school on April 12, 1949, for anti-state activities and disruption of the public order.  As a minor, he was sentenced to 6 months of prison, four and a half of which he spent on remand in Košice and the rest in Bratislava. The sentence was revoked to the full extent by the Regional Court in Košice in 1990. From 1951 to 1953 he served in the auxiliary technical battalion in Plzeň. After his release from the prison and dismissal from the battalion he experienced various labour professions. He was a miner in manganite mine in Kišovce, in ironstone mine in Rudňany, worked in joint agricultural cooperative and also as a railway company employee. In 2015 he received a letter of thanks from the Nation‘s Memory Institute and a commemorative medal. Today he is retired and lives in Hôrka. He has 6 children and 11 grandchildren.