...to breath the air, to see the view, to check out the faces, to taste the food and to smell the flowers. You be there in order to understand. We went together, the whole family. Uncles, brothers, cousins. We went to a foreign country. A country that is inherited in our family history in a good and in bad senses. A country from which the founder of our family came from. A country that reflects in the best way the culture and the language of our grandmother, of the mother of our parents.

t is hard to really understand, even after you see pictures or read or listen to the story.

Sometimes you be fiscally in the specific place. To breath the air, to see the view, to check out the faces, to taste the food and to smell the flowers. You be there in order to understand.

We went together, the whole family. Uncles, brothers, cousins. We went to a foreign country. A country that is inherited in our family history in a good and in bad senses. A country from which the founder of our family came from. A country that reflects in the best way the culture and the language of our grandmother, of the mother of our parents.

And we had to be there in order to understand some of the stories.

You must walk on the sidewalk, clime the stairs, see the view from the balcony in order to imagine.

You mush drive with a car all the way that your family walked in order to respect.

You must freeze in the forest in order to understand what real cold is.

You must stumbled in winding road in order acknowledge what happened.

Our grandmother, our mother came from here. From Humenné. She escaped from Humenné but also came back to Humenné. She was a true Slovak.

Our grandmother, our mother was a real hero. You should read the book and out. This is the real script of the life. You can learn from this about human love, about the love of life, about a survival instinct, about believing in one god, about the respect for one’s parents and about the humane kind in all shapes and forms.

Our grandmother thought us all of that.

We visited in the places of her childhood, in Humenné, in the main road, in the train station and at the cemetery. We were amazed to know that the Jewish legacy in Humenné is kept in persistence by a saint man called Juraj Levický from Humenné. There is a famous quote from poem in Hebrew – “Where you can find such people like this man”. It is like that line was written about that person exactly.

We visited in the escape track of the family. In the town Staré Hory and than in Dolny’ Jelenec. We would like to thank mayor Ján Kováč that made a huge effort helping us finding out about the history of our family and to locate pieces of information that are relevant to our family journey in those difficult times.

We also had the chance to see and smell the views, smell and taste of Slovak. We mostly were impressed. We took a lot of picture and we were very emotional.

We are all sure that the human kind is good by nature and we cherish all of the good people that helped to saves people, Jewish people, hunted people, our family back than at those horrible times.

May there memory will last for ever, together with the memory an soul of Blanka Bergerova – Our own hero. Our mother. Our Grandmother.

The Efrat’s.