Oral history interview with Alexander Bachnár
Alexander Bachnár (né Bachner), born on July 29, 1919 in Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), describes his father (Jakub Bachner), who was a painter and his mother (Františka Bachner), who was a homemaker; attending primary school in his hometown; studying at the Piarist Gymnasium in Nitra, Slovakia and transferring to high school in Prievidza, Slovakia; graduating in 1938 and attending the Pedagogical School in Bratislava, Slovakia on Lazaretská Street; being excluded from the school in March 1939 because of his Jewish heritage; being drafted into the Sixth Labor Battalion (VI Prapor) in February 1940; being assigned later to a labor camp for Jews in Nováky; doing manual work in the camp at first and later teaching children; the escape of a fellow prisoner (Weiser) from the camp, after which Bachnár served as director of the camp's primary school; the beginning of the Slovak National Uprising and the subsequent liquidation of the Nováky Labor Camp at the end of August 1944; joining the uprising; being a platoon commander of a Jewish partisan group and taking part in the fighting in central Slovakia; the end of WWII and working as the editor of the military newspaper Bojovník from 1945 until 1949; moving to the Pravda printing house in 1949 and working as an editor for two years; being released from Pravda in 1951 for political reasons; working for two years as a welder in the Juraj Dimitrov chemical plant in Bratislava; finding work in 1953 with the daily Práca as an editor and later working as a secretary and then as an editor of foreign affairs; being fired in 1969 from the editorial staff and subsequently being expelled from the Communist Party; being an editor at the Institute of Health Education between 1969 and 1976; retiring on June 30, 1976; and his marriage and three children.
Some video files begin with 10-60 seconds of color bars.
- Interviewee
- Mr. Alexander Bachnár
- Interviewer
- Dr. Jan Hlavinka
- Date
-
interview:
2017 March 24
interview: 2017 April 05
interview: 2017 April 12
- Geography
-
creation:
Bratislava (Slovakia)
- Language
-
Slovak
- Extent
-
5 digital files : WAV.
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection
-
Record last modified: 2022-07-28 19:51:55
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn562258
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