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Elizabeta Vajs


Elizabeta Vajs was born on 13 October 1928 in Genterovci. She met her husband, Ladislav Vajs, in 1945: "He came back from the camps in the beginning of May. I was seventeen then. Later, his friends returned as well, Fürst Janèi, Elizabeta [Fürst's] husband, and his brother. Since they did not have parents, they came to the Eppingers'. We lived in the same house and that is how we met. We got engaged the same year and the following year, on 7 November 1946 we married." They moved into the Vajs family house on Glavna ulica (Main street, former Partisan street), built in 1920 by Zsigmond Weiss, Ladislav Vajs' father. Life was difficult for the couple in the first years after the war, especially because the house had been quite damaged during the war and in need of renovation.

Seen as belonging to the former bourgeois class, the Vajs' were often exposed to the whims of the new communist authorities. Elizabeta Vajs recalls the post-war period as "very, very difficult." People did not see "him [her husband] as a concentration camp survivor who barely escaped death, they considered him a capitalist because he had a big house." The local authorities initially only allowed the couple to live in one room of their house whereas the remaining rooms were distributed to the employees of the local branches of UDBA [Yugoslav secret police]. "I will never forget," says Elizabeta Vajs, "for the 29 November [the main national holiday in Yugoslavia] they celebrated and drank, you know how those first years after the war were. They were fighters and they drank and made a lot of noise. We were not allowed to say a word. At midnight they were still shouting and singing partisan songs. I went to the kitchen in my nightgown and asked them to be quieter. And someone responded that if I have a problem, I can just leave. Such were the times. They were just waiting for us to do that. Any tiny detail could have sufficed for them to confiscate our property."

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Hannah Starman and Martina Bofulin
(hannah.starman@guest.arnes.si)
(martina_bofulin@yahoo.com)



 
 


Elizabeta Vajs lives in Lendava in her late husband's family house.

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Seen as belonging to the former bourgeois class, the Vajs' were often exposed to the whims of the new communist authorities.

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