Oral history interview with Gianni Polgar

Oral History | Accession Number: 2016.198.58 | RG Number: RG-50.944.0060

Interviewee: Gianni Polgar
Interviewer: Júlia Kinga Kirácy
Date: 2018 November 22 (interview)
Geography: creation : Rome (Italy)
Language: Italian
Credit Line: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

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Special Collection: The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
Topical Term: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
Holocaust survivors.
Personal Name: Polgar, Gianni.
Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Provenance: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch produced this oral history interview as part of the European Holocaust Survivors project.
Funding Note: The production of this interview was made possible by Jeff and Toby Herr.
Conditions on Access: No restrictions on access
Conditions on Use: No restrictions on use
: Record last modified: 2019-01-04 07:49:20
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn639423

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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.