Ján Chudík Doc.,JUDr.

* 1926  †︎ 2022

  • “After the injury on May 6, 1945, I was in the military hospital in Ostrava and on the day the war ended, I felt some kind of tension. In the hospital, there were lightly and seriously wounded people, some without their arms, or without their legs, and around the hospital we would hear a lot of shootings. When the soldier who was guarding the hospital came in we would ask what was going on. He said that mostly probably the Germans had broken the defences and were coming back. In a moment like that, it was impossible even to escape, one had to accept the situation and wait for whatever would happen. The terrible shooting continued and after some time, the same soldier came in and said, ‘Guys, the war is over!’ That was the first tension I felt. I was thinking about what was about to happen, and then I heard that voice and needed to accept and understand that the suffering was over, and the war was over.”

  • “I joined the uprising with the consent of my parents. I took part in combat in the army group of V. Kvitinski in eastern Slovakia, and as a young man I was in this uprising until the very end. In this context, I would like to share an idea. The period of the uprising is usually referred to as if it only lasted some two months or so. This is also related to the fact that it started only when it was close to the autumn. If it had started in May, it would have lasted longer, because the winter period was very unfriendly for the uprising. In a sense that was what the partisan movement was dealing with, I mean ambushes and laying mines, would be impossible during the winter. During the winter, there are conditions in which partisan fighting is just unrealistic. For example, in the snow, all the partisans would leave traces and we could get killed at any time.”

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    Bratislava, 12.02.2019

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Fragments of a grenade hit me close to my heart during an explosion. It did not hit my vein, and that saved my life. Otherwise I would have bled out

Jan Chudík was born on November 12, 1926 in Jakubany, a village in Stará Ľubovňa region in the east of Slovakia. In 1944 he joined the Slovak National Uprising as a volunteer. He was in a group led by Viacheslav Kvitinski. After the suppression of the uprising he returned home for some time, and in April 1945 he voluntarily enlisted to fight for the Allies in the army group of the 4th Ukrainian Front. He completed his training on the territory of Poland. On 6th May he was seriously injured by a grenade explosion near the city of Ostrava. After the war he studied at the Teaching Academy in Prešov, then at the Faculty of Law of Comenius University in Bratislava. He worked at the Department of Criminal Law until his retirement. He is a co-founder of an organization called Prometeus, which deals with the protection of human rights, and is a member of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters.