"The unit was put together there, of course, no one wanted to go, because everyone knew that the war was lost. The soldiers did not want to go to the front, but of course not the officers either. At that time, we used all sorts of tricks. Our unit was to be armed with light machine guns. These were produced here in Považská Bystrica. We waited for the latest types of light machine guns to test them on the shooting range. It was cold, they brought a box of machine guns to the shooting range on a big car. We unpacked them, but the machine guns were well preserved so that they wouldn't corrode. Apparently, they were not expected to be used immediately. It was very cold, the conservation was tough, so the machine gun fired one round and the end. Therefore, it had to be degreased before the shooting. Of course, we said - light machine guns don't shoot (laughs). "
"The Russian who lived here travelled daily to Vienna. Apparently [he] was from the NKVD, which had a center here and probably planned to expand its scope. I had a godmother in Vienna. When he found out, he told me he would take me to Vienna. I didn't go. The fact is that the first days [after the liberation of Bratislava] were such a situation that a person disappeared and no one have seen them anymore. Nothing could have been done. Nothing. There were cases when, for example, we heard that a Russian on the staircase to the Central Station had shot down a civilian at once. That's when I realized that once a person has survived a war, you'd better not speculate and stay. "
"Namely, in Turany there was still a factory of the wood processing industry during the First Republic. He went hunting there. He was also a great trader. At that time he joined a joint-stock company in Turany. He put money in there, and for that money, single-purpose woodworking machines were imported from Germany. At the same time, he gave the factory workload - to produce light accommodation cells or cottages that the German army was very interested in. "
*pouring or splashing water on girls or women is a part of Eastern folk customs in Slovakia
Jozef Vojtech was born on August 8, 1919 in the Záhorie village of Kostolište, near Malacky. His father was a local teacher and an important cultural and social figure (founder of the union cooperatives), his mother worked as the head of the local post office. He attended primary school in Pernek, graduated from high school in Malacky in 1938. From September 1, 1938, he worked as a substitute teacher in Sološnice and between 1941 and 1942 he was a full-time teacher in Zohor. During the years 1942 - 1944, he completed compulsory military service at the school for reserve officers in Bratislava. In 1944, as a lieutenant of the special staff company, he was responsible for the construction of several military facilities in Bratislava. In 1945, he assisted the Wehrmacht in the fortification work of the „Bratislava Fortress“. After a reversal in the strategy of the German command and the arrival of Soviet troops, he hid with his family in the woods for several days during the Easter holidays. After the liberation of Bratislava and Slovakia, he joined the renewed Czechoslovak Army. After the war, he worked as a teacher at Koliba, after the communist coup in 1948 he worked as a part-time worker at the Ministry of Education in the Department of Physical Education. He worked as a civil servant for physical education and school construction until the revolution in 1989 when he retired. He lives in Bratislava‘s New Town.
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