Viola was born in Bratislava in 1928, where she later lived in the Old Town on Tobrucka Street near Comenius University. As a teenager she decided to join the liberation struggle against fascism. She was first a member of an illegal youth organisation with the Novork brothers. She helped in the printing shop, posting and distributing agitation anti-fascist leaflets. These were extremely important at the time - together with the radio, they were one of the main methods of communication for the resistance. This work could easily have cost her her life.
At the age of fifteen, she decided to take matters into her own hands and joined the Slovak National Uprising with her partner being a partisan fighter in the village of Slovany in the region of Turiec - only a short distance from Martin and Turčianske Teplice.
Viola was a member of the brigade of Red Army under officer Alexei Seminovich Yegorov , who was dropped off in Slovakia in early August 1944. Yegorov had previously helped with the Ukrainian partisan resistance. He came to our territory as a commander of a 22-man group to the Nízke Tatry and actively communicated with other resistance fighters not only during the war.
In addition to distributing anti-fascist leaflets, Viola also took a direct part in the fighting. She first served in a reconnaissance unit, later working her way up to participating in more dangerous confrontations. These became fatal for her.
Together with ten other partisans near the village of Turčiansky Svätý Ďur, they attacked the transports of the Nazi battle group Schill. Viola threw a grenade at the car, blowing up three fascist officers. The remaining soldiers opened fire on the partisans hiding in the earthworks (a field planted with potatoes). Viola was wounded and then brutally attacked - after kicking, punching and pulling her hair, she was killed in action on 21 September 1944. She had turned 16 just a short time before. Only one of her comrades in arms survived the whole event.
Viola's memorial plaque can be found on Tobrucka Street near the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University. Viola's story proves that anti-fascism is a movement of people of all ages, backgrounds and origins.
Alžbeta, or Perža, as she was called, was a fresh graduate of the Gymnázium in Dolný Kubín when she joined the SNP in 1944.
Her mother wrote a letter about Perža in 1964 at the request of the Pioneers for the 20th anniversary of the SNP. '...as she had distinct views, ideals, and even a goal, she was able to distinguish the good from the bad, the right from the reprehensible.' She excelled in languages, knowing Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian, learning German and French, and reading Latin.
She voiced her opposition to the fascist occupation regime loudly. In a religion class taught by a representative of the HSĽS (Hlinka Slovak People’s Party), who was responsible for the deportation of her relatives, she pointed out the contradiction between the beastliness of fascism and what they were being taught.
In September 1944, she was hit by shrapnel from an armoured car while performing combat and reconnaissance duties. Severely wounded, the Germans transported her to a school in Trstena, where they had a dressing station. Richard Schott, a German orderly, asked her if she was Slovak or Czech. Perža replied in French that she was Czechoslovak. The commander in her presence ordered her to be shot, to which Perža replied in German, 'Then I must die so young!'
Richard Schott and a doctor decided to save her and transported her to a field hospital in Rabka, Poland. There, Perža insisted that a picture of Hitler be taken from her room. Seven weeks later, she succumbed to her severe injuries. In 1947, she was awarded the SNP Second Class Order and the badge of a Czechoslovak partisan in memoriam. Her commemorative plaque hangs in Dolný Kubín on the facade of the Gymnázium P. O. Hviezdoslav.
The Slovak National Uprising was not a simple skirmish with rifles. It was a highly organised campaign that relied on a multitude of brains that accounted for every eventuality. Without prudent logisticians and officials, the uprising would have been defeated in a matter of hours. So it was not only the guns but also the pens that, in the hands of the resistance fighters, struck a blow at the heart of fascism. One such fighter was a man in his twenties, Ján Beník
Citizen of Pezinok, born in Lovasovce (today's Koniarovce, 16 km away from Topoľčany), he experienced a stroke of luck when he was conscripted into the army of the Slovak state. An officer recognised him there and sent him to work in the archives instead of the front. He thus avoided the dangerous eastern front, where he would have faced the onslaught of the Red Army. Later he worked as a scribe in Trnava until the start of the SNP.
Even the troops themselves were surprised by what followed from the so-called allies after the announcement of the slogan Start Evicting! "It was horrible, we were writing up the filing slips and suddenly we heard that the Germans were coming at us from Senica, so we packed up. [... ] We were afraid that they would start shooting at us with machine guns, but fortunately they didn't." This is how he and many others experienced the beginning of the invasion of Slovakia by Nazi troops. So the Trnava garrison gathered up and left to fight in the uprising.
However, this was not the case for all soldiers in Slovakia, as he himself discovered on his journey. For example, the artillerymen in Hlohovec refused to join them, while armored vehicles were waiting for them in Nitra. Ján later fell ill and had to go to the infirmary. He met his superior from Trnava and together they were transferred to Banská Bystrica. In the heart of the uprising, Mr. Beník worked directly under Commander Golian and supervised the course of the uprising.
When the resistance began to be suppressed and the partisans were forced to retreat, Major Lichner's unit (including Jan Benik) went in the direction of Detva. After discovering that a friendly officer had been captured by the Germans, they were rescued by a local lumber hauler. They were given clothes and food along with a German ID card. It was this that saved their lives the very next day when they encountered an Austro-German patrol. The soldiers let them go after presenting their ID cards and Mr. Beník went to Žíran, where his parents lived.
His mother didn't recognize him at first because he was wearing unfamiliar clothes. After two weeks he was called back to Trnava, and later he started attending conscriptions during the spring of 1945. This did not last long as the war ended in May. Even after the war, he kept to administrative life, and was decorated several times for his services during the uprising.
"During the war I was a scribe in the rank of corporal in Pezinok, later in Banská Bystrica. I was just a bureaucrat during the war. I didn't have a gun."
Source : Bojovník
Alexander was born into a family of craftsmen in 1914 in Nové Mesto nad Váhom. In 1937 he joined the basic military service in Banská Bystrica, where he completed an intelligence course. When the Slovak state began to take its first anti-Jewish steps, Alexander was stripped of his rank as a non-commissioned officer and transferred to a soldier.
At that time, Alexander was already involved with his brother in smuggling people across the border, most often through Hungary to Yugoslavia. Later he also escaped by this route, and this is how he reached France. There, in March 1940, he joined the Czechoslovak Foreign Army and fought on the Western Front. After sustaining wounds he was transported to the UK where he met his future wife Ailsa Cousin.
In July 1944, he was sent from England to the Eastern Front in the USSR to reinforce the 2nd Czechoslovak Paratroopers Brigade. Here he also took part in the fighting at Dukla. He left England with 96 other soldiers, but only thirteen survived. He took part in the fighting at Podbrezova and the famous death march through Chabenec. He subsequently fought alongside partisan units until February 1945, when they joined the advancing Red Army. But his anti-fascist struggle did not end there.
After the war, Alexander changed his name from Deutelbaum to Doman. In the words of his wife, "after the bitter experience of the war, he did not want to have a German-sounding surname". Alexander lost a lot because of the Holocaust - almost his entire family was murdered by the fascist regime, and twenty-three of his relatives ended up in Nazi death camps. Alexander was assigned to a search unit whose task was to look for war criminals - officials of the Slovak state and supporters of the Tiso regime. He was assigned to this unit, according to Major General Anton Rašla, because "they had every personal reason to be implacable opponents of both Slovak and German fascism." The team gradually succeeded in discovering the hiding places of Tiso's supporters and arresting them. Among the detainees was the last chief of the Hlinka Guard, Otomar Kubala, or the Minister of Propaganda, Gašpar.
At the time when he tried to capture Ferdinand Ďurčanský, who had been a major contributor to anti-Jewish legislation, Doman was dismissed. The reason was the outrage of the people of Bratislava at the shackled hands of the captured, among whom was the president of the Slovak state, Jozef Tiso. They attributed the idea of handcuffing to Doman.
Subsequently, Doman was sent to Great Britain, where he represented the military attaché. Here he began to meet Ailsa more often and in April 1947 he returned to Slovakia with her. He continued to serve the military until 1949, when he retired. In 1969 he was rehabilitated and promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was promoted again in 1994, and died two years later.
Klement Balco, born in 1923 in Horná Lehota, took an active part in the Slovak National Uprising from August 26, 1944, as part of the partisan brigade For the Freedom of the Slavs. In 1944, this brigade already had around 200 members.
Among other places, he fought in Batizovce, in Tatranská Polianka, in Martin, in Močiar, in Jalná, in Dobrá Niva, or in Kráľová Lehota. In the war, his brother Ján, who worked as a scout, was killed. On that day, Ján was already returning to the camp when a German patrol caught him and opened fire. As soon as they heard the shooting, the partisans launched a counterattack. The Nazis subsequently fled, "so at least Ján's body didn't fall into their hands," says Klement.
After the suppression of the SNP, he continued fighting in a partisan manner from the mountains. He often participated in sabotage missions. It is recorded that seven times he took part in the mining of railway lines and bridges, making it impossible for the Nazis and collaborators to transport soldiers and supplies to the front.
He fought until March 15, 1945, when units of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps and the Red Army advanced into the area where his unit was operating.
We do not often hear about the participation of Roma in the Slovak National Uprising. We should celebrate their merits in the resistance against the fascists and remember the names of these fighters.
The story of Anton Facuna is an example of this. A native of Turčianske Jaseno (near Martin), he earned his living as a chauffeur and an occasional builder until he was drafted into the army. In October 1941, at the age of 21, he joined the Ružomberok artillery regiment. From there, in 1943, he was assigned to a technical brigade in Italy, but defected to the Rinoldo partisan group, which was operating in the Perugia area. In April 1944, he reported to the Czechoslovak mission in Rome, where he joined the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He flew to Tri Duby Airfield in the village of Sliač with thirteen OSS personnel to conduct Operation Day. There he served as an interpreter and guide under the code name Anton Novák.
His task was also to infiltrate the enemy lines. He was sent across the front line in civilian clothes several times - for example, in the vicinity of Hronský Svätý Kříž and Zvolen. In the enemy ranks, he gathered information about the movement of German troops. Facuna was so successful in this task that legends were told about him and a warrant was issued for his arrest by the Germans.
His most difficult task was in German-occupied Zvolenska Slatina, where he had to hide with the evangelical priest Zvár. He was later joined by two other members of the Day group. After the arrest of the priest's family by the Gestapo, their location was revealed and only Facuna was able to escape, taking valuable information about the partisan fighting back to his base in Bari, Italy.
Despite the adverse fate of former soldiers of the Western Resistance (such as the OSS), Facuna's story does not end there. In 1957, he lived in Bratislava and worked on the establishment of the Union of Czechoslovak Gypsies, from where he informed the Czechoslovak government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Czechoslovak Republic about his work on the "Slovak-Gypsy Dictionary". In it, he argues against misconceptions about the poverty of the vocabulary of the Romani language and also talks about plans to create a text on the "history of the Gypsies".
However, he has not only worked on the cultural awareness of the Roma population through linguistics and history as the chairman of the Union of Gypsies - Roma in Slovakia, but also as the director of the Butiker (Work) enterprise. He wanted to concentrate representatives of all traditional Roma crafts under one roof.
At that time, unfortunately, there was strong resistance from the state to the promotion of Roma identity and culture. Roma who tried to fight for their identity were labelled as Roma nationalists - Facuna was one of them. He was ousted from his position as director of Butiker and the authorities did not allow him to attend the 1978 International Roma Congress in Geneva.
In 1980 Anton Facuna dies. After his death, his Slovak-Roma dictionary and his works on Roma history were trampled over by the state. Facuna was a great Roma fighter who was betrayed by the state for which he was willing to lay down his life. "You can't imagine what we suffered because of his fight for Roma rights," his wife says.
Let us not let his name disappear from the history of our country, but let us celebrate this hero not only for his fight against fascism, but also for the education of Roma culture.
Ján Dovina was born on 21th March 1922. When he was 19 year old, he started working as a farmer in the then German occupied Austria. There, he saw just how bad the french war prisoners were treated. "They were often beaten for no reason, they were required to do hard work while not being given proper nourishment. But the worst was yet to come." he recalls.
A group of workers was travelling home by train. As they were waiting in Vienna on the train station, a train with russian war prisoners arrived. "We tossed them a handful of cigarettes, but they received only a few of them, most of them landed on the tracks. The german soldiers who were guarding the train stormed the cabin and impaled that one Russian that was waving to us. [...] Luckily we escaped without any harm, but we'll surely remember this experience for our lifetime." said Ján Dovina. This moment was a key memory that prompted Ján to enter the uprising movement.
In October 1943 he was drafted and in August 1944 his unit was moved to Lupkovský Priesmyk (pass) by the polish border. As soon as the Germans heard the news about the uprising, they began disarming Slovak units. Ján Dovina didn't waste any time here, and just before the uprising he deserted to the guerrila group Sergej. He was able to acquire some thousands of ammo rounds for the group. After around 150 more soldiers joined the guerrila group, they created a guerrila brigade called Kriváň. "I took part in eight attacks on German car convoys and on several other ambushes. I watched the back of my friends during a bridge sabotage. It was always a matter of life or death, but I survived."
After many weeks of brutal fights, a part of the brigade made their way to the advancing Red Army. Even after all those years, he still can't forget the horrors brought about by the battle of the pass. "There were mines everywhere. The engineering corps only cleared a narrow strip of the main road. Those that accidentally strayed didn't fare well. Even our battalion lost a few men. But the worst of it all was watching as the mines massacred kids."
He was part of the engineering corps in the Red Army and in the Czechoslovak defense organization. Later on he was promoted to a lance-corporal and then to commander of 45mm anti-tank cannons. He was advancing along with his unit all the way up to Liptovský Mikuláš, where they were met with heavy resistance. At the end of March 1945, he was transferred from the front lines to Košice to the personal guard unit of president Beneš. In May 1945 he arrived to Prague carrying the Czechoslovak flag.
After the end of the war, he countinued his military career. He was working at the military academia in Hranice in the Moravia region. In 1947 he was awared a medal for bravery against the enemy. He left the army in 1977 with the rank of mayor, but due to a special order of the defense minister in 1990, he was promoted to a lieutenant colonel in retirement.
Ján Dovina died on 29th January 2017 at the age of 95 years.
Martin Libiak was born on January 28, 1925, near Zvolen, as the eldest of five children in a working-class family. The Second World War caught him as a teenage boy, and he joined the partisans of the Slovak National Uprising at the age of 19. Further circumstances or motivations are unknown.
Martin Libiak hardly talked about his involvement in the SNP at all, as his son Jaroslav (born 1947) said: "At home, we only perceived that he was a partisan when he said he was going to the "branch," as his father called the meetings of anti-fascist fighters, and from there he always came back drunk as a skunk. I don't wish anyone to experience such a childhood as we had with him."
It is known from documents that he served in the partisan unit of Yegorov "For the Liberation of the Slavs" from August 29, 1944, as a machine gunner. From November 1944 on, he was captured in a concentration camp for six months. Martin Libiak's recollections of his time in the SNP come from the memoirs of his wife, Mária (1925–2022). "Well, that's what partisans were like. They shot one German, and then the Germans burned the whole village. (...) Then they were hiding in some mines, and that's where they were found. They shot everybody who was there, except Marco (his wife called him Marco). He was the youngest of them, so he was lucky because he hadn't been in the war yet, so they spared him. They didn't call him up for the war until he was 21. (...) Well, he wanted me. But I didn't want him very much."
"Only then did I hear that he had been caught and was to be taken by train to the camp. There was a teacher here; he gave me some money to take to the station quickly. He said he'd bribe them there; at least let them treat him better. I ran to the station; they didn't want to let me in, but I went around the other side, looking for him among the carriages. The train was starting to move when I saw him stretching out of the car behind me. I ran after him, but the train was already moving, and I didn't have time to hand him the money."
Mária was an inherently simple and straightforward woman who took everything that happened to her in life as an unchangeable fate. So it was with regard to Martin and their later marriage, as she often confessed, she did not like him very much. This is evidenced by her recollection of Martin's return from the war and his proposal. With a guilty smile, she confessed: "When Marco came back from the camp, I already had a second one. Marco came to see me, telling me to marry him, that otherwise he would shoot himself, and that he had a gun hidden somewhere in a closet. I didn't want him... But I didn't want to anger his family in case he did something, so I took him."
In 1946, there was a wedding; less than a year later, Mária and Martin Libiak's first son, Jaroslav, was born, followed by two more sons, Milan and Ján. Martin was a bricklayer by trade, and he followed this profession throughout his life. In 1946, he still completed his compulsory military service in a shortened time because, due to his participation in the SNP, he was released to the reserve. He was awarded the highest partisan honours (the Medal of Honour 255), and despite the fact that the subject was a partial taboo in the household, he wore his decorations proudly and took an active part in all commemorative events. One of the few memories of the concentration camp that Martin Libiak mentioned to his wife Maria was: "The people who lived there near that camp felt sorry for them, so they at least threw the potato peelings over the fence, and that's what they cooked at night."
His wife Mária recalled that ever since the "proposal," Martin had been suicidal, especially when under the influence of alcohol. Unfortunately, he often resorted to alcohol, and his son Jaroslav also recalled this with bitterness: "When he came home drunk, he always tore at least one shirt and broke a cupboard. My brothers and I, as little boys, used to hide in the attic until he fell asleep, whether it was +30 or -13 degrees. We were so scared of him. Mom always took the brunt of it. By the time we were bigger and slowly becoming adults, my brother got mad and once slapped him. His own father! After that, he became afraid of us and stopped doing that. But he started doing that again, saying that when he drank, he wouldn't come home for three days. We didn't know what was wrong with him." His wife Mária also recalled these excesses in this way: "Once he was not home for two or three days, We already knew he was drinking somewhere. I just suddenly met him in the street, and his whole back was muddy. And he said, I threw a rope, but a branch broke."
After more than 30 years of working on construction sites, Martin Libiak had a work accident (spinal injury as a result of a fall from the second floor), for which he could no longer work and remained on disability pension. "I was leaving for work in the morning, and I told him that since he was home, he should at least cook something. I came home from work, and Marco was nowhere to be found. Only in the cupboard did I find the message, 'I'm in the attic'. I go out, and there he is, hanged. I found a suicide note in the bedroom afterwards and a suit ready for the chest with all his badges."
This story is an illustration of how war, despite heroic honours, can negatively affect a person's life, having an impact on their surroundings and spilling over into future generations. The younger sons Milan and Ján, lacking a good role model in their father, became alcoholics at a young age; their families broke up, and both died at the age of 60 as a result of poor lifestyle choices.
Martin Libiak is not a hero to be mentioned at the SNP anniversary celebrations or in the articles of the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters, but let him remain a memento and a warning of the far-reaching consequences of the war, even decades after its end.
Monuments and memorial plaques to the victims of the Second World War bear the names of Roma murdered because of their ethnicity. However, a commemoration ceremony for Roma victims of the war did not take place until 1991.
Antónia Pustajová was born in Čierny Balog, where the Nazis settled on November 7, 1944, so that they could commit their atrocities. They captured around 500 rebel soldiers and evacuees, who were imprisoned in the local school. According to Pustajová, they caught the partisans at the moment when a plane dropped food aid in the hills near the mining plant where the Germans were holed up.
A week later, in the forest above Čierny Balog, the occupiers raided a temporary Roma camp and took away about 60 Olaš Roma; according to the law at the time, nomadism was forbidden. The captured Roma were interned in a school with partisans and Jews. Antónia Pustajová's mother cooked for the imprisoned Roma families, to whom Antónia carried food in two kettles every day. When the German soldiers captured her, a local priest, Jozef Poláček, helped her and interceded for her with the German commander. A seventeen-year-old boy was also with her, but he chose to stay at school with his parents and sisters, whom the Germans held with the promise of work.
A tragic fate awaited the captured Roma. The women and children were herded into a hut, which was poured with petrol and set on fire; the men were shot. The next day, they ordered local Roma men to bury them right where they had been murdered. At the same time, SS members burned down the Roma settlements in Čierny Balog and Pust, a total of 23 houses.
A film documentary, Baro mariben (The Great War), was made about the Roma Holocaust, in which Antónia Pustajová also tells about her experience.
Imrich Gibala was born on 31 October 1920 in Detvianská Hriňová, into a large peasant family, where he grew up together with eighteen siblings. While studying at the gymnasium in Rimavská Sobota, the occupation of the southern borderlands forced him to interrupt his education. The determined Gibala crossed the state border illegally and completed his grammar school education in Tisovec, where he successfully graduated in 1941.
He served in military with devotion and bravery. Gibala took part in the Slovak National Uprising and fought in the defensive battles for the villages around Zvolen. Even severe injuries, including 43 shrapnel wounds, did not stop him in his heroic efforts.
After the end of the war, he began his long professional military career, which lasted 35 years. During his military career he was involved in training and physical education, studying physical education and sports at renowned universities in Prague and Bratislava. After completing his active service, he was appointed to the rank of Brigadier General in 1976.
In addition to his military career, he was also involved in publishing, teaching foreign languages and was active in the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. He was awarded various decorations for his combat merits, including the 1939 Czechoslovak War Cross and the Order of the Red Star.
In honour of Imrich Gibala, a commemorative stone has been erected at the entrance to the main building of the Dukla Military Sports Centre in Banská Bystrica.
Vladimír Fraňo was born on 5 April 1926 in Košťany, Czechia. He joined the SNP in the autumn of 1944 with his father and two sisters. On the border of the White Carpathians and the Javorníky Mountains, they helped the partisans with clothing, food and information. In February 1945 the rest of the family joined them.
Fraňo received a message from the Russian Gleb Klagin to organize willing citizens into an insurgent group. He managed to mobilize about thirty. Thus the Kotovsky partisan unit was formed.
In February he took part in the successful ambush of a squad of the Hlinka Guard, who wanted to fortify themselves in a tavern before the action. "We surrounded them. At the same time, we just disarmed and stripped those guardsmen. We had few weapons and good boots were a rare commodity in that winter. Moreover, we warned them that if they appeared in our mountains again, it would be for the last time..."
They raided the rifle range, disrupted the reinforcement works, attacked train transports and broke the railway near Puchov several times. They secured commissions by stealing cattle stolen by the Germans. "And we also looted stolen horses from the fascists. I rode one of them until the end of the war."
After months of successful operations in the mountains, the company had approximately 70 members in its ranks, which included several dozen deserters from the Hungarian army. "One day an unknown woman and man came to us. Our men searched them closely. They found poison on them. When interrogated, they confessed that they were going to get into our field kitchen and poison us. Also, according to the materials we found on them, they were proven to be accomplices of the Germans. Apparently of the cruel SS Jagdgruppe 'Josef', whose headquarters were then located in nearby Nimnitz. Those two did not end well that day."
The partisans lived in harsh conditions. They slept in huts made of brushwood, in which there was also a fireplace. The stove heated only at the troop headquarters. They used military tents when they moved around.At the end of the war, Fraňo took part in the successful disarmament of the Hlinka Youth detachment.
In the post-war period he worked in Matador in Puchov as a production manager until his retirement. From 1945 he was a member of the Union of Slovak Partisans, later SZPB, where he held various positions. He was awarded the M. R. Štefánik Medal of the 1st degree for his lifetime resistance work.
In his retirement, he devoted himself to documenting the anti-fascist resistance in the vicinity of his hometown. He also worked on the book "Moments of Defiance", which was completed by publicist Pavel Vitko in 2019.
Vladimír Fraňo died on 16 June 2012 at the age of 86.
Anton Pavlík was born on 16 December 1924 in Brodské, Skalica district. He was working in the Gbely oil works when on 29 August 1944 he intercepted the call of the Slobodný vysielač (Independant Broadcaster) to rise up against fascism. He organized a group of boys and set off for Banská Bystrica.
After a short training, he was included in a combat group. He took part in the defensive battles around B. Bystrica and Zvolen, and defusing an ambush group that burned down border villages in order to provoke a conflict between the partisans and the Hungarians. In the heavy fighting for Čremošná, his unit was crushed and broken.
The rapidly shrinking territory of the SNP caused the retreat of most of the partisans to the area of the Old Mountains, where they were surrounded by German troops. Pavlik and several partisans from his unit were taken prisoner.
Together with two partisans, he managed to escape and embarked on a 10-day journey to his hometown of Brodské. From there he undertook small-scale sabotage actions on his own, stealing weapons and ammunition from the fascists and bringing food to the Russian prisoners.
In March 1945 he was denounced, detained by a Gestapo patrol and forcibly interrogated. He had to work on military fortifications around Malacky and defuse unexploded air mines. On 2 April, in the confusion of the bombing, he managed to escape from the Malacky prison. After returning home, he tried unsuccessfully to disarm the gendarmerie station.
After the end of the war, he took a job with the People's Militia, but eventually returned to Nafta Gbely, where he worked as a revision technician after graduating from the electrical engineering school. He regularly took part in SNP celebrations.
Anton Pavlík died on 13 July 1999 at the age of 74.Júlia "Uľa" Maťuchová was born in 1898 in the village of Šumiac. She lived in a semi-detached house with her sister Iľa, with whom she often had disputes based on her beliefs (while Uľa was a committed communist and had pictures of Lenin and Stalin around her part of the house, Iľa was a strong believer and had Christian icons on her walls).
During the Slovak National Uprising, she had the courage to help the partisans in their battles. She used to visit the partisans at night, supplying them with food and information. This proved fatal for her, and during one of her visits, she was caught by police troops and taken to the prison in Ilava.
There she underwent severe torture: being stripped naked, having cold water poured on her, being beaten, etc. Despite all this, she did not reveal a single name. After half a year of imprisonment, she managed to escape to the Prašivá hill in Nízke Tatry. It was in Nízke Tatry that she joined the 1st Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade of J. V. Stalin's Partisan Brigade, also known as the Alexei Semionovich Yegorov Partisan Brigade, where she worked in the field kitchen.
Unfortunately, her birth house no longer stands today. However, the memory of Júlia Maťuchová is immortalised in a painting by Andrej Doboš titled Partisan Maťuchová, painted in 1954. The painting is exceptional because Júlia was not painted in a military uniform as a partisan, but in a traditional costume.
Ján Stanek was born on 4th of June 1909. He joined the underground resistance movement in 1944 when he began collaborating with resistance group Flora, which was under the command of KSS and slovak military high command.
He was involved in securing the launch of a plane that departed on 4th August 1944 carrying the Slovak National Republic delegation to the USSR. After the germans disarmed the Bratislava unit, he signed up for the Czechoslovak army in Banská Bystrica. On the next day, he was promoted to commander of a tactical defense unit stationed in Telgárt. His task was to stabilize the situation on Horehronie, and stop the german units from entering through there. The Telgárt offensive was one of the few successful resistance offensive actions, which was used by the high command to boost general morale of the other units. Thanks to this, Stanek was given the nickname of "Iron Captain".
At the end of October, he was promoted to a mayor of the general assembly. After the retreat to mountains, he created the military-guerrila group Jánošík, which joined 2nd Czechoslovak paratrooper brigade where he became the commander of the 2nd battalion of which. In December 1944 he was captured by the germans. From the midst of February he was imprisoned in Berlin, Flessenburg, and in the concentration camp Dachau. From there, he was transferred along with 125 other inmates and political prisoners into the Innsbruck camp. During the transport he was set free on 30th April 1945 by guerrilas. With the help of American army, he was brought to Naples to the Czechoslovak military mission.
After he returned to Czechoslovakia in July of 1945, he became a member of the defense intelligence of the general assembly in Prague. From January to March 1946 he served dual role, both as a commander of the 4th fast division in Žilina and commander of military units in east Slovakia employed in the fight against Bandera clique.
At the end of May 1949 he was relived of the commanding duty and was transferred to Prague, where he applied to a teacher position in the military academy. In September 1949 he was arrested and prosecuted, and in 1951 he was transferred to the reserve forces and he became a railway worker. Officially he was convicted of collaboration with the Germans and from treason against the uprising, but the real reason for his conviction was a connection to the burgeois nationalist wing in KSS. After ten months he was released from the prison. In 1968 he was rehabilitated and in 1990 he was granted the rank of general mayor from the president of the Czechoslovak Federative Republic. He died on 17th of February 1996.
Anna Bergerová came from the Ruthenian village of Habura in eastern Slovakia. She grew up with her mother, while her father left for work in America. Her brother Vasil was sentenced to death for his refusal to fight alongside the Germans, but managed to escape to Bohemia, where he joined the anti-fascist resistance.
Anna recalls a modest but cohesive life in the village, where the main groceries were barley, oats and potatoes. "My adolescence was a hatred of Hitler, a desire for the war to be over and for us to be free."
At Christmas 1943, Vasil unexpectedly visited them, encouraged the family to support the partisans, and informed them about the situation at the front. Only a few hours later he had to flee. "We found out when the train from Medzilaborce was coming, my brother-in-law loaded my brother into a sledge and covered him with a rye sheaf."
In early September 1944, German soldiers occupied their house. Anna recalled the furious soldiers who took up residence on their premises and placed a wounded German officer in her bed. This officer warned Anna and her family of the danger, causing them to flee to the partisans without any belongings.
They checked in with the doctor Jozef Dolina, with whom Anna was doing nursing work. Later, she and her sister were trained as messengers, locating German troops and informing the partisans. They smuggled grenades and ammunition to the partisans in a child's cradle. On November 20, 1944, the partisans of the Chapayev Brigade had to leave the Ondav Highlands to break the German front and join the Red Army. Out of 1500 partisans, about a thousand managed to survive the crossing through the frozen minefields without water and without the possibility to make a fire.
After the war Anna became a functionary of the Slovak Women's Union. In 1948 she moved to Bratislava, where she continued her studies in law. She was involved in the Red Cross, was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Union of Partisans. She became a deputy of the National Committee and a member of the council, where she served for seventeen years.
Anna was frustrated by the persistence of differences between rich and poor, while believing in the ideals of equality. She was awarded a national honour for her work. Anna Berger died on 19 February 2024.
The son of a mining family was born on 13 May 1927 in Klenovec. The declaration of World War II found him as a student of the gymnasium in Rimavská Sobota. He had his first direct encounter with the Uprising when, in mid-August, he received information that paratroopers would land in the mountains nearby.
On August 28, 1944, the militia occupied the crossroads in the village and the next day the Revolutionary National Committee came out of legality. He volunteered, formed a platoon. "We were liaisons, kept watch, or practiced military marching under the leadership of student Sam Ribayan. In doing so, we met a Soviet partisan. He put us in our place, saying that instead of marching, we should practice covering and crawling."
The patriotism of the people of his native village and region is evidenced by the fact that up to 700 men joined the partisans from there. 'I know, we could have returned home,' he says, 'not risking it, not fighting. But how would I look at myself in the following decades? Even today, I believe in young brave people. For example, those who are not afraid to speak out against the fools who would like to change the history of our anti-fascist resistance. Or I respect those who sincerely want to pull our country forward."
After the war he received a certificate of participation in the national liberation struggle and began to study journalism in Bratislava. He soon worked his way up to senior editor at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. The peak of his growth was the post of head of the Obzor publishing house. As a supporter of Alexander Dubček's reforms, he disagreed with the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. This was the reason for his dismissal. For a long time, he was active in the Historical and Documentation Commission of the SZPB, created leaflets about the resistance in the region and advocated the preservation of monuments. Július Molitoris is a holder of several military and union decorations. At the age of 97, he is one of the last living direct participants of the SNP.
Miloš Krno was born on 25 July 1922. He spent his childhood in Liptov, after finishing folk school he began to study at the German Gymnasium in Kežmarok. In the mid-1930s, the peaceful multiethnic life of the youth under the Tatras was interrupted by the arrival of Hitler-friendly professors from the Czech Sudetenland. He therefore transferred to the state Czechoslovak gymnasium. After the establishment of the Slovak state, he refused to join the Hlinka Youth and led a self-educating atheist and basically left-wing ring. After graduation he was accepted as a student at the Faculty of Law of the Slovak University in Bratislava, where he became involved in illegal anti-fascist activities. In the spring of 1944, his first collection of poetry, Mad Spectacle, was published.
After the SNP was declared, he did not travel from his holiday in his native village to Bratislava, but straight to the centre of historical events - Banská Bystrica. There he and his friends founded the Society of Fighting College Students. He worked mainly as a partisan educator and publicist, contributing to the KSS Pravda press organ and other newspapers, but also to the insurgent radio with news material, poems and responses to the first Soviet films.
He became a member of the IV Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade, and several of his poems and agitations were published in partisan lithographed magazines. In March 1945, after crossing the front in the Horehronie region, he travelled to Košice, where he became editor of the revived newspaper Pravda.
After the liberation of Bratislava, he passed his state exams in law and moved to Prague to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic as the personal secretary of State Secretary Vladimír Clementis. After the parliamentary elections in 1946, he worked for seven years at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Moscow as First Secretary. That was also the year his first collection of short stories and features from his personal experiences in the SNP, Viaduct, was published.
He worked as a journalist and central dramaturge of the Slovak Films, as well as a long-time volunteer functionary of the SZPB, the Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship and the Union of Slovak Writers. He translated poems from Russian, German and from authors living in the then Soviet Union, and wrote prose. In 1972 he was awarded the title of Meritorious Artist. He was the recipient of several military and state decorations.
He devoted himself to the life stories of the participants of the Uprising in his prose collections and novels The Breadwinner, Morning Wind, Hawk Field, While the Cigarette Burned Out, The Game with Death, Black Mountains, etc. His most translated work is the novel about Capt. Ján Nálepek, I'll Come Back Alive (published in nine languages), which was made into a film of the same name and a feature film Tomorrow Will Be Late, co-produced in Belarus, with Milan Kňažko in the title role. On public television, however, adaptations of his short stories are more frequently shown under the titles The Sun Rises Over Prašivá, The Train to Victory Station and the film Valley with Jozef Kroner.
Miloš Krno died in Bratislava in July 2007, four days before he turned 85.
"During the war it was normal to help, I didn't take it as a meritorious act, just as normal human help."
Emília Kompišová was born in 1922 in Liptovský Ján. When she got a job in an attorney's office during the first year of the war, she recognized the fear that people of Jewish descent were experiencing. Later, in a wholesaler's shop, she met a Jewish woman, Jana Holanova, a lifelong friend and the first person for whom Milka issued false documents.
When Emília found a place in the notary's office with the registry office, she did not hesitate to produce illegal civil IDs for partisans and racially persecuted persons. She received the photos for the ID cards from a woodcutter in the mountains as well as from the owner of a wholesale warehouse. She carried out her work in secret, so people had no idea to whom they could owe the saving of their lives.
Kompišová also functioned as a contact for the partisan group in the Liptovsko-Jánska valley, to whom she reported on the intentions of the German command. She hid an illegal worker from Moravia in her parents' house for three months, who then escaped from the Guards with new documents.
She did not speak of her merits even after the war. Only in 2011, during the SNP anniversary celebrations, one of the resistance fighters stepped down from the place of honour and gave her his rose, saying, "Miluška, if you hadn't helped me then, I would never have stood here, I would have been killed."
Emília Kompišová celebrated her centenary a year ago.
Tibor Urbánek was born on October 1. 1923. The study of medicine in Bratislava brought him to intern in Banská Bystrica during the summer of ’44. He worked in a small hospital with MUDr. Petelen. He informed Tibor that SNU (Slovak National Uprising) would soon begin.
Urbánek decided to stay and help. His help was much needed, as the hospital experienced a wave of 25 injured soldiers right after the SNU started. The hospital took in anywhere from 20 to 30 soldiers a day. Tibor and other caretakers persevered for two months, even with insufficient equipment. Urbanek ascribed his tirelessness during this period to his youth. He was only 20 years old at the time.
After the war ended, he continued his medical studies in Prague. He graduated in 1948. Urbánek was one of the founders of the Research Institute of Rheumatic Diseases, where he worked from 1952 to 1990. He was the chairman of the Slovak Rheumatologic Society and a member of the federal committee of the Czechoslovak Rheumatologic Society.
His influence reached far beyond the Czechoslovak borders. He was a member of the French Centre Oncologique et e Biologique de Recherche Appliquée scientific society and worked for the European League Against Rheumatism. Urbánek was an outstanding researcher outside of his clinical practice. He and his colleagues were awarded the prize of the French Society for the fight against rheumatism. He died at the age of 95.
Edita Hanzelová-Katzová was born on August 29th1920 in Nové Zámky. She became a member of socialist youth organizations as a high school student and later joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). After the creation of the Slovak state and the dissolution of KSČ, she entered the new, illegal Communist Party of Slovakia. After she graduated from high school in 1939, she couldn’t pursue higher education due to her Jewish ancestry. She found employment and ramped her antifascist activity up to higher intensity.
Edita was arrested by the police in September of 1941. She was then sentenced to 3 years in prison for developing communist activity after one year in custody. Edita was transferred to a Jewish working camp in Nováky in 1943. She managed to escape, thanks to the members of the Communist Party. Edita found employment in Trenčín under a false name, where she continued to aid the local resistance by creating false identity documents and preparing the SNU.
She left for Bánovce nad Bebravou on August 27th, 1944, ready to join the uprising and lead the local post office. Edita persevered in that position until the partisans retreated from the town on September 13th. Her next position in the resistance was that of political commissar of the 3rd company of the Ján Žižka brigade. Edita’s unit was supposed to dismantle a section of the railway line near Trenčianske Jastrabie on September 26th. The Germans were awaiting them, however, and opened fire at the partisans. Edita fell that day, fighting.
Tomáš Mokrý was born on December 19th, 1921 in Lazany. He entered compulsory military service in the aviation regiment on October 1st, 1942. Tomáš then studied at the Aviation Youth School (ŠLD). Later, after the SNU broke out, an infantry company was formed from its frequenters. Because of that, Tomáš got to the uprising’s front and was first employed in combat on September 5th, 1944, during the attack on Telgárt.
ŠLD members formed a scout unit on September 9th. The scouts discovered that Germans had the heights above the tunnels under control. That gave the Germans control over the path from Telgárt to Poprad. The scouts found out the location of the German front guard. No partisan knew that other Germans hid in trees.
The scout unit was moving through the harsh terrain of Kráľová hoľa when the scouts and Germans registered each other simultaneously. An intense gunfight broke out.
This fight claimed the lives of even some aviators. Tomáš Mokrý was one of them, shot in the head by a German sniper. His comrades then transferred his body to Telgárt, where his comrades buried him in a mass grave.
Eduard Trizuljak, who was just 18 years old during the Uprising, went through many dramatic and emotionally difficult experiences during the war. He remembers the time he spent living with other partisans in the Western Tatras, in barracks near Zverovka that had previously been used by forest workers. One of the barracks served as a hospital, while the other housed up to two hundred men.
One of the most critical moments in his life occurred when a German commander, who was in charge of anti-partisan operations from Žilina, organised an attack on Zverovka. Austrian mountain troops also took part in this operation. The first casualty was a guard soldier. His commander tried to defend the barrack with a machine gun but was shot dead. Trizuljak and his friends made the decision to flee and sought refuge in the forests.
Trizuljak and his brother faced a moral dilemma when a member of the Hlinka Guard approached them, wanting to defect to the other side. They debated whether to kill him to protect themselves from potential danger, but ultimately chose to starve him out, hoping he would surrender on his own.
The war was not just about military strategies and grand heroic acts, it also involved everyday trivial problems. "The issues were all sorts of things, we often scraped ourselves on trees. Most of the time, we were being eaten alive by insects on our backs," he recounts.
After he killed two German snipers, he was approached to become a sniper himself due to his impressive accuracy, he hit one hundred percent at sixty metres. However, at one point, with his rifle aimed, he chose not to pull the trigger. He began to contemplate the futility of shooting at people on both sides and lowered his weapon. He viewed the entire war as a disgrace and stressed that evil exists where injustice is committed. He frequently recalled his father's saying: "If you have nothing good to do for anyone, do not do harm," which influenced his decision to spare the life of the German soldier.
His story stands as a testament to courage, empathy, and the quest for humanity even in the darkest of times.
"Loyal in life - inseparable in death."
Eugen (Evžen in Czech) Karvaš was born on 24th of June 1922 in Hodonín. In 1941 he moved from Moravia to Slovakia, where he began to study medicine at the Comenius University in Bratislava. Here he kept in touch with the illegal anti-fascist resistance in the Protectorate and helped refugees in the crossings from Bohemia and Moravia. He was imprisoned for this activity. After the start of the Slovak National Uprising in August 1944, he took an active part in the rebel fights.
Vladimír Blahovec was born on 10th of July 1920 in Norfolk, USA, while his parents were returning from emigration back to the newly formed Czechoslovakia. He studied law at Comenius University and at the Conservatory, where he developed his musical talent. From 1940 he was actively involved in the anti-fascist resistance together with his sister Vierka and Pavel Scharfstein. Their activities were initially individual, with no direct connection to an organised resistance group, but in 1941 him and Scharfstein joined the illegal activities of the Communist Party of Slovakia in Bratislava's Trnávka district.
Three years later he was arrested for his activities in the anti-fascist resistance movement of Bratislava university students, but in May 1944 he was already released. Together with Ján Fintor, he took part in preparatory actions in Demänová, where, under the pretext of filming, they helped to prepare the Uprising. Subsequently, he worked officially as a musician in Prievidza, studying Upper Nitra folk songs. In reality, however, until the beginning of August, he secretly delivered the obtained weapons to the designated places.
Both of them joined the Suvorov partisan detachment, which was part of the 1st Czechoslovak Brigade of M. R. Štefánik. This detachment operated in the area of Strečno and Vrútky, where heavy fighting with German troops took place.
On 14 September 1944, Eugen Karvaš and Vladimír Blahovec took part in the ambush of the barracks near Vrútky. However, the ambush was unsuccessful, probably due to poor preparation or treason, and the partisans were ambushed by a German garrison. Karvaš and Blahovec, along with two other partisans, protected their detachment's retreat with machine guns. Blahovec was fatally wounded. Karvaš, though lightly wounded himself, administered morphine to his comrade as a medic to ease his pain. During the retreat, Karvaš carried his friend and protected him with his own body, hoping to save him. He did not leave his side even when Blahovec let out his very last breath. Karvaš continued to defend the partisans' retreat, but when he ran out of ammunition, instead of surrendering, he used a cyanide ampoule. Both were found dead, clasped in an embrace.
Karvaš was a talented young man not only in his field but also in poetry. After his death, a collection of intimate lyrics entitled Vteřiny mého ticha (Seconds of My Silence) was published by his father with the help of the Union of Slovak Partisans.
After the war, both men were honoured in memoriam. The Slovak National Council awarded them the Order of the Slovak National Uprising and Comenius University awarded them the titles of M.D. and J.D. A street leading to their final place of rest is named after them. On their shared grave stands a monument depicting the battle comrades in an embrace, which today is a symbol of friendship and devotion to the ideals of freedom.
He was born into a family of workers at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. Already at the age of six, he had to go to work at the sawmill. In 1929, Juraj joined the Communist Party and was imprisoned several times for singing revolutionary songs around the village.
He finished his compulsory military service in 1937, but it didn't take long before he had to return. "In 1938, as part of the mobilization, I entered military service on an extraordinary basis. In 1939, the army withdrew us to the front against the Poles. In Levoča, the whole regiment of troops mutinied. And because we were well organized, they dismissed us home as unreliable." In 1941, Juraj was supposed to fight against the Soviet Union, but his unit mutinied near Lviv. Juraj Čupka found himself on field trial as an organizer of the mutiny, where he was rescued by a teacher and officer named Alaksha. "It was a difficult time because every rebel there was immediately put to death."
In 1944, after moving to the Polish border, he established a connection with the partisan detachment Chapayev. On July 15, the entire unit dispersed on the instructions of the partisan detachment and moved to central Slovakia. When Čupka wanted to stop at his family's home there, he was spotted by "Wogel, the then forester of the Ribbentrop district, and he immediately arranged a search for me as a military deserter or partisan." A gendarmerie patrol caught him in his native Šumiac, and after several days of imprisonment, they decided to escort Čupka. "I felt in danger, so I thought about escaping. An opportunity presented itself to me to jump from a moving train." At the end of August 1944, he met the commander of the partisan squad, Yegorov, and remained with him until March 28, 1945. As a partisan, he took part in combat actions during the occupation of Banská Bystrica and its surroundings.
In March 1945, he returned home. After two weeks in the local People's Militia, he was called up to the I Czechoslovak Army Corps in Poprad and joined the liberation battles in Liptovský Mikuláš, Žilina, and as far as Valašské Meziříčí.
He received the character and badge of a Czechoslovak partisan and several decorations. Juraj Čupka-Murár died on 3 May 1989.
Štefan Ladislav Kalický was born on 2 July 1911. From his childhood, as a working-class boy - a half-orphan, he was aware of the injustice of the capitalist system. As a teacher, Kalický educated children and adults in many areas- he led a singing group and folk agricultural courses. Kalický devoted himself to the propagation of beekeeping, horticulture, and breeding. And he did not hesitate to join the illegal anti-fascist movement.
In Dobšiná, Kalický and local teachers prepared the population for armed resistance against fascism and helped organize units of the State Defence Guard. With the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, Kalický became a member of the Revolutionary National Committee at the gendarmerie station, a unit prepared for the needs of the armed uprising.
On 3 September 1944, Kalický, a lieutenant in the Slovak Army Reserve, was ordered to transport two wounded soldiers to Brezno. However, the Germans already occupied Pusté Pole. They stopped the car and shot all but the driver without hesitation. The bodies of partisans were thrown to the roadside. Štefan Ladislav Kalický was properly buried only a month later in the cemetery in the village of Rožňavské Bystré, where he was considered the first victim of the SNU.
Miloš Krno was born on 25 July 1922. He spent his childhood in Liptov. After finishing elementary school, he studied at the German grammar school in Kežmarok. In the mid-1930s, the peaceful multiethnic life of the youth under the Tatras was interrupted by the arrival of Hitler-friendly professors from the Czech Sudetenland. He, therefore, transferred to the state Czechoslovak grammar school. After the establishment of the Slovak state, he refused to join the Hlinka Youth and led a self-educating atheist and basically left-wing circle. After graduation, Krno was accepted as a student at the Faculty of Law of the Slovak University in Bratislava, where he became involved in illegal anti-fascist activities. In the spring of 1944, his first collection of poetry, Mad Spectacle, was published.
After the declaration of the SNP, he did not travel from his holiday in his native village back to Bratislava. Krno went straight to the center of historical events - Banská Bystrica. There, he and his friends founded the Society of Fighting College Students. He worked mainly as a partisan illuminator and publicist, contributing to the KSS Pravda press organ. He also helped the insurgent radio with news material, poems, and responses to the first Soviet films.
Krno became a member of the Fourth Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade, and several of his poems and agitations were published in partisan lithographed magazines. In March 1945, after crossing the front in the Horehronie region, he traveled to Košice, where he became editor of the revived daily Pravda.
After the liberation of Bratislava, he passed his state exams in law and moved to Prague to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic as a personal secretary to State Secretary Vladimír Clementis. After the parliamentary elections in 1946, he worked for seven years at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Moscow as First Secretary. That year also saw the publication of his first collection of short stories and features from his personal experiences in the SNU, Viaduct.
He worked as a journalist and central dramaturgist of the Slovak Film, also as a long-time volunteer functionary of the SZPB, the Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship, and the Union of Slovak Writers. He translated poems from Russian, German, and from authors living in the then Soviet Union and wrote prose. In 1972, he was awarded the title of Meritorious Artist. He was the recipient of several military and state decorations.
He devoted himself to the life stories of the participants of the Uprising in his prose collections and novels The Breadwinner, Morning Wind, Hawk Field, While the Cigarette Burned Out, Playing with Death, Black Mountains, etc. His most translatable work is the novel about Capt. Ján Nálepek, I'll Come Back Alive (published in nine languages), which was made into a film of the same name and a feature film Tomorrow Will Be Too Late, co-produced in Belarus, with Milan Kňažko in the title role. On public television, however, adaptations of his short stories are more frequently shown under the titles The Sun Rises Over Prašivá, The Train to Victory Station, and the film Dolina (Valley) with Jozef Kroner. Miloš Krno died in Bratislava in July 2007, four days before he turned 85.
František Tlučák was born in 1927 in the village of Pohorelá. He came from a shoemaking family. He graduated only from primary school. František joined the resistance on August 16, 1944, when a truck with partisans of the 1st Partisan Brigade of J. V. Stalin was under the command of Captain Alexander Semionovich Yegorov, who was looking for volunteers to join their ranks. "In order not to be missed, I joined straight away on that Sunday." František was barely seventeen years old back then. The partisan brigade traveled through Brezno - where a whole lorry load of partisans had filled up, so they had to send another one from the barracks - to the Jasen Mountains, where he underwent a short military training. They lit the bonfires through the night to signal the way to Soviet resuppliers in the forests.
The liberation of Banská Bystrica ended successfully. They obtained new army equipment from the local barracks and then went on to Zvolen, Zlaté Moravice, and Topoľčany, where they ambushed and captured a German patrol at night. They ambushed a train heading for the eastern front in Žarnovica. They were later ordered to move to Martin to help other partisan groups. Frantisek had the role of a light machine gun helper in the fighting. The group suffered heavy casualties while suppressing German reinforcements.
In the Battle of Vrútky, František and his group were taken prisoner due to heavy German superiority. They were transported to Žilina and from there to a concentration camp in Germany. There, he overcame various hardships, such as hunger or exhaustion from forced labor. At the end of the war, he was freed by American troops. In August 2016, he was awarded the Badge of Honour of the Romanian Army. He died in January 2023.
The elder Ján was born in March 1909, the younger Pavol in August 1910. While Ján was inclined to painting from a young age, Pavel turned out to be a talented sportsman who, after graduating from gymnasium, headed straight for the medical faculty in Bratislava.
The brothers' life trajectories were most influenced by the 1930s. In 1932, Ján entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied under the eminent artist Willi Nowak. After a successful exhibition debut in Prague in 1937, he moved to Bratislava. In the meantime, Pavol became a military officer. He was instrumental in founding a section of army athletes in Bratislava. He himself excelled in sabre and fleuret fencing.
The beginning of the Second World War changed the brothers' lives. After interrupting his activities in the surrealist movement Avantgarde 38, Ján began to work as a teacher at the Department of Drawing and Painting of the Slovak Technical University. In 1941, however, he decided to leave his position because of his anti-fascist views and moved back to Senica. He hoped to avoid Nazi persecution. From 1939 onwards, Pavol was involved in organising illegal crossings of patriots from Bohemia to the Balkans and Western Europe. In 1941 he was sent to the Eastern Front, where he suffered an eye injury. After the start of the Slovak National Uprising, he became commander of the Váh Infantry Battalion's artillery. Pavol was killed in mortar fire at the observation post in Podkriváni.
After the end of the war, Pavol received the SNP decoration in memoriam with the title of M.D. After the end of the war, Ján was instrumental in the establishment of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. During his tenure he educated 31 artists. After his death in 1968, he was named a national artist in memoriam.
Rudo Božík was born on 10th of July 1920. Since childhood he was interested in aviation, as his hometown was located on the Bratislava-Vajnory route. He was trained as a locksmith, but he did not last long in this profession and in 1938 he was to enter a military school. However, due to the announced mobilisation, the studies did not start.
In January 1939 he was accepted into the Slovak Aero Club, where in August he completed his training as a sport pilot. In December he voluntarily joined the armed forces and started his military flight training. In June 1942 he successfully completed the fighter course. Subsequently, he led the training of new flying adepts.
In June 1943 he went to the Eastern Front for his first war deployment, where he participated in a total of 102 combat flights and achieved 9 confirmed shoot-downs. On 26th of September, shortly after departure, he crashed and sustained severe injuries. This ended his deployment to the Eastern Front.
At the beginning of the following year he became a member of the Emergency Squadron, whose task was to protect the airspace around Bratislava. In April, he inadvertently committed sabotage by shooting down a German plane, which he mistook for an American one. He took part in a defensive action against a large-scale Allied attack, the aim of which was to bomb Vienna. In another action, he managed to shoot down a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.
After the start of the SNP he flew behind the Soviet lines to Lvov, but on 6th of September he already flew back to Slovakia to help the SNP. He made 31 combat flights and managed to shoot down 3 German planes. Thus he became the most successful pilot in the SNP. He managed to do this despite the lack of ammunition and regular weapons failure of his outdated aircraft. A month later he flew back to the USSR to retrain on Soviet aviation equipment.
After a tough entrance examination he became a member of the Czechoslovak Army in the USSR. He was supposed to fly back to help the SNP, but that didn't happen because of its suppression. So he joined the new Czechoslovak Aviation Regiment as a flight instructor. The regiment did not get into combat again.
After the war, he continued his military career and managed to rise to the rank of captain. He was discharged in December 1958 because of his role in the armed forces of wartime Slovakia. He thus had to take up a job as a miner, from where after two months he took up a job as a locomotive driver. In 1970 he was rehabilitated and promoted to colonel. He died in June 2000.
Rudolf Božík was one of the few Slovaks decorated by both war camps. His awards include the SNP Cross, as well as the German Iron Cross.
