M.D. Ján Hanák

* 1935

  • “In those cattle cars there were two buckets. One was filled with water and the other one was empty. The water was for those who were thirsty, although we didn´t have any glass or anything. And the empty bucket served as a toilet for the whole car – women, men, old or young, nothing mattered. We boarded, they helped old people to get on. The Germans and guards were running around and screaming. They closed the door hooked from the outside and the transport moved. I don´t remember how many days and nights we went. Of course, sometimes the train stopped, the door opened and all the dead people were taken out. Some were already ill when entering the transport. Fortunately, my brother and I stayed healthy, but the old people got sick and died. They offloaded them, filled up the water bucket, emptied the toilet bucket and we went on.”

  • “The most powerful impression of all I have in me was hunger. We were still hungry. During one of the line ups, I noticed there was a canteen nearby. Some prisoners were peeling potatoes, and one of them went to a trash can and threw out the skins. When they were done, I went to this trash can and took out the skins. I brought them to our barrack; there were about fifty or even sixty of us. My brother and I washed the potato skins and baked them on a little stove we had there. It was about seventy years ago, whole seventy years, but until today, anytime I am in a restaurant, where a waitress comes and brings a menu…. There are listed five soups, dumplings, sausages, fish or poultry meals, pancakes or I don´t know what else, I keep looking at the menu. Although my mind is still in Sereď, in the trash can, and on the little stove, where the best meal ever was baked – the potato skins.”

  • “Together with my brother, I was looking for our mother, when suddenly we spotted one lady from Žilina. I asked her if she didn´t know our mom. She said she did, that she knew her very well, and so I told her we were looking for her. We didn´t see her from the fall and they told us in Sereď she was supposed to be in Theresienstadt. The lady told us she was there, but she was transported away and she didn´t know where they took her, whether to Auschwitz or elsewhere, but that she was no longer there. So, you can imagine how we felt about that. And, she added: ‘And you and your brother don´t show up here too much either, as they can take you away too, and you shall never come back!’ I didn´t understand why wouldn´t we come back, but she replied: ‘You know, the Jewish children never come back’. I said that we weren´t Jews, but she continued: ‘You maybe aren´t, but your parents are’.”

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    Žilina, 04.03.2017

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Those two years cannot prevail eighty happy years

Paratrooper
Paratrooper
photo: archív pamätníka

Ján Hanák was born on October 2, 1935 in Žilina, where he also attended elementary school. From September until Christmas of 1944, he and his brother kept hiding in Puklina near Žilina, in Bratislava and in Trnava orphanage. Then, between the end of 1944 to February and March of 1945, they both spent in a Sereď concentration camp. From there, a transport in cattle cars took them to Theresienstadt, where they lived to see the end of the War. After the War, they met with their parents in Žilina, who also survived the Holocaust. In the years 1947 to 1951, Ján studied at a middle school in Žilina, and later at the Secondary Vocational School of Electrical Engineering in Žilina and Rajec. In 1956, he graduated at a Higher Technical School of Mechanical Engineering in Kysucké Nové Mesto. He attended the military service as a member of the parachute unit in Prešov. In the years 1959 to 1965, he studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the Comenius University in Bratislava to become a surgeon, spending more than 20 years practicing in Žilina and Bytča. Finally, from 1987 until his retirement, he worked as an advisory doctor for the Social Insurance Company in Žilina. During his whole life, Ján Hanák was very active and versatile in sports.