Pavel Sendrei's grade report from secondary school

This is my certificate from the first grade of the secondary school issued in 1933 in Zilina. In the field for religion it says: Israelite. Hungarian was my mother tongue, because my father had finished the university in Budapest and my mother went to a Hungarian school, in the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I had a governess who taught me German. I only began to learn Slovakian when I started the first grade of primary school. After elementary school I enrolled in a secondary school. I didn't have any problems with Slovakian. I graduated on May 25, 1937. As a young boy I was a member of the Makabi where we practiced gymnastics and athletics and which was part of the Zionist society Makabi Hazair . The members of the organization went on picnics, campings where we were taught dances, songs, Hebrew language and history. In 1937 I participated in the Makabiada in Zilina and every year I went to the Makabi Hazair camp. After 1940 this was interrupted because of the German occupation of Slovakia. I socialized with exclusively Jewish children. In my class in school there were about 40 children, 11 of which were Jews. I was lucky that there were no arguments in my class between the Jewish pupils and the others. We spent 7 years together and were good friends all that time. My best friend, Kornil Verthajn, and I sat on the same bench. We went together to the Makabi Hazair. Kornil was deported together with his parents but came back but his parents did not survive the Holocaust. After the war I helped him make aliyah from Czechoslovakia through Yugoslavia. I remember that in school every week we had lessons held by Rabbi Dr. Fridman. He taught Hebrew language and the history of the Jewish people. After graduation I worked in the druggery until aryanization. Then I got fired and like many Jewish children, I attended an agricultural course in the Jewish community. The course took place on a rented agricultural property where we cultivated the land ourselves and we took to sell everything that grew and that is how we survived. This lasted about a year. On that farm, we worked for a living but it wasn't in preparation for aliyah to Israel, only for survival.