Soňa Goldenbergová (*1944)

Soňa s matkou

The mother of Sonia Goldenberg (née Glattstein) ignored the call to register in Prešov at the end of March 1942 and thus avoided the deportation of young Jewish girls to Auschwitz.

A few days later, she married Zoltán Glattstein, which saved her. The father was an accountant and, together with his brother, they obtained exemptions that protected the part of Glattstein’s family that remained in Slovakia from deportation. At the time of suppression of the SNP, they were in the village of Sásová near Banská Bystrica, the mother was already in an advanced stage of pregnancy. They tried to hide in the mountains, but were betrayed and taken to the concentration camp in Sereď. All were transported to concentration camps, only Soňa’s mother could stay. She gave birth to Soňa by C-section on December 10, 1945, and Alois Brunner himself decided on her survival. In March, she and her mother were deported to Terezín: three-month-old Soňa and her mother, with an unhealed wound, traveled for six days in a cattle car. After liberation, Soňa weighed 2.5 kg, and she recovered only thanks to her mother’s tenacity. Mother’s parents and eight siblings perished. In July 1945, the father returned from the Sachsenhausen camp – without a brother and without a father. Soňa graduated from a 12-year high school and in 1963 began her studies at the law faculty of the Charles University in Bratislava. In the second year, she accepted the offered membership in the Communist Party, while her motivation was thanks to the Soviet army that liberated Terezín. In March 1969, she traveled to Israel for three months to visit her aunt and considered staying there. Finally, at the request of her parents, she returned. During the inspections in the spring of 1970, she was threatened with being fired from her job because of this trip, but the chairman of the party’s all-party committee supported her and she remained a regular party member. In 1972, she got married in Mukachevo, her husband came from Khust in Transcarpathian Ukraine. In the 1970s, she was summoned twice for questioning by the ŠtB in connection with a request for an exit clause to Yugoslavia, she did not sign the cooperation. Until 2002, she worked at the District Sanitary Station in Prešov, after which she opened a law practice. Today she lives with her husband in Bratislava.

The full story of the witness can be found in the online archive Memory of Nations.