Martin Michalec - Slovakia
“My live is as follows, I am a veteran of the war, a participant of WW II, and a prisoner of the concentration camp Mauthausen…“
1926 born in Krajné in the Myjava district (Slovakia); grows up in a poor family of farm and seasonal labourers
1941 starts an apprenticeship as a mechanic
1943/44 takes part in the Slovac National Uprising as partisan
December 1944 arrested in Moravské Lieskové, imprisonment in Myjava; transfer to the Gestapo prisons in Nove Mesto nad Vahom and Trenčin
February 1945 deportation toMauthausen, where he is in block 8 of the “Sanitätslager“, afterwards transferred to Gusen, where he has to work for the war industry, finally in the “Leichenträgerkommando”
May 1945 liberation in Mauthausen, treatment in an American military hospital in Gusen
June/July 1945 return via Prague, joins the communist party
from 1945 start of his military career as officer and pilot, studies at the military academy in Brno
1960 he marries and has two sons
from 1973 head of department in the Czechoslovak ministry of defence in Bratislava until retirement in 1989
Zum Zeitpunkt des Interviews lebte er in Bratislava (Slowakei)