After surviving the war and returning to my home town, we began a new life. This document was issued to my father, Arpad Erdelyi, by the Czechoslovak Repatriation Office on 25 June 1945.
We returned to Piestany. My father was taking care of the destroyed pharmacy and my mother got the task of handing out things and clothing from UNRA for people affected by the war. My task was the household. Everyone who returned and had nowhere to live got a room in the Ivanka treatment facility.
Our priority was to get an apartment. There were people on the National Committee who knew us from the prewar years and they said to me: ‘Find an apartment, and if there’s a Guardist living there, we’ll kick him out.’ I didn’t think too much of that, but I went around and was successful. I found one apartment where a lady from Topolcany lived, whose husband had left with the Germans. That did her in, as they say. So they moved her out. She left without much protest. We moved in there, but weren’t there long, because the apartment was on the second floor, and my father had a very ill heart. He couldn’t handle taking the stairs. Because my partner-to-be had fallen in the uprising, I wanted to have my own family. I got married in 1946.
