Pavel Bednár

* 1926  †︎ 2024

  • “During my revolting activity I helped the Jewish refugees from towns a lot. They were hiding in our house and presumably it was about to end up soon and we though to become free, but upraise was suppressed and so was our freedom. Where they lived, we had to feed them. Somewhere you had to pay even for the housing. They needed money coming in and other stuff. I was a kind of a connection. At the German commando in Nove Mesto nad Vahom I made arrangements just to be able to get a train ticket to get to Bratislava, Modrová, Topolčany, Nove Mesto nad Vahom or Trencin. Simply the places, where the Jews had some acquaintances and could borrow their money.“

  • "There were the partisans in the pub. In the evening they´d sleep over in our barn. It was the Sunday after the uprise. On August 29 the uprise began and they were in our home on Sunday and ended up crossing the front. And we had to feed them all the time."

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    Rýmařov - Janovice, 23.03.2016

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    duration: 03:23:56
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Helped partisans and Jewish immigrants

Pavel Bednár in 1943
Pavel Bednár in 1943
photo: archiv pamětníka

Pavel Bednár was born on 4 March, 1926 in a village of Nová Lehota in the hills near Považský Inovec in Slovakia as the eighth of eleven children to Jan and Pavla Bednárovi. The family lived in Kopanice Dolina, the neighbourhood of which was a refuge of a numerous partisan brigade Sněžinskij after the Slovak National Upraise. Kopanice Dolina was also a hide for many Jewish families, who would not survive without the help of inhabitants of the village. Even the family of Pavel Bednár was hiding a Jewish girl Maria (Goldstein?). Back then the eighteen years old witness became not only a connection of partisans, but also secretly brought money to Jewish families and necessary stuff. At the end of war the Bednárs were still hiding a partisan Bedřich König at home. After liberation Pavel Bednár left to Moravia, where he found Bedřich König in Stará Ves in Rýmařov region, who worked there as a national administrator in a shop. The witness apprenticed a business assistant and after changing several jobs he returned to a shop in Stará Ves, where he worked until retirement. Pavel Bednár passed away on April, the 23rd, 2024.