It was 1939, and Slovakia did not want to be taken over by Germany. Germany ... had other ideas. Slovakia was eventually forced into a corner, and had a tough decision to make: Do they fully embrace their situation and give themselves over to Germany, or do they submit to the least degree required and maintain some of their independence? Ultimately, after weighing the pros and cons (on the one hand: that German efficiency! On the other hand: terrible genocide), they decided they'd rather not be a full member of Club Human Misery in exchange for more punctual trains, and signed an agreement letting them retain some integrity. Not enough to save tens of thousands of Jewish lives, or avoid being a part of the Nazi war machine -- but some. They became a protectorate of Germany under a Roman Catholic priest named Jozef Tiso. To get a personal perspective on these events, ------- sat down with Katarina Urbanek, who spent her teenage years studying in Slovakia, where she also enlisted as a member of the Slovak Underground. She told us ...#6. Slovakia Had Its Own Version of the Underground Railroad

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Since Slovakia was right next to Austria and the Reich, Allied planes would frequently buzz over the Slovak countryside on their way back to safe territory. And since the German pilots were skilled fliers as well as huge jerks, many Allied planes ended up being shot down on the Czech-Slovak border. Luckily for any airman who wasn't immediately caught, the local Underground had a series of safehouses set up to get them out from behind enemy lines.

The first stop for many of these airmen was a small Slovak town on the Vah River near the present-day Czech Republic in the Carpathian Mountains, which are significantly less full of vampires and Vigos than the movies would have you believe. And during the first half of the 1940s, the leader of that town's Underground was Stefan Urbanek, who worked with his teenage daughter Katarina. Here it is in her words ...

Several people lived in the mountains outside the town. Mountain people, like what

you would find in West Virginia, who would bring in berries and mushrooms to trade.

Every so often they would come to us, saying, "Over there somebody is hiding." So

my dad went out there at night. He spoke several languages, including perfect

English and the gypsy language [Roma]. The people hiding there turned out to be

American airmen shot down.

via Katarina Urbanek

My town in 1935. My house is behind the second field from the right of the road.

So my dad went out there at night. He would call out in English: "Come out. We can't

guarantee your safety, but if the Germans find you, you are going to prison."

Sometimes we would have to call out to them three or four times before they got out.

When they did, we promised to protect them and hide them the best we could.

When the people in the mountains got down to go to church in town, they would go

down with them in disguise, after getting rid of their uniform and I.D. Once in town

we took them straight to the police station (one time having six at the same time).

That was so if a German soldier suddenly came in, we could explain it by saying, "Oh,

that's our new prisoner. We got him today." From there we had to get him to the next

station. We had several stations, each one marked with a symbol.

Larin

Max/Hemera/Getty Images, NatalyaAksenova/iStock/Getty Images

Usually two pitchforks sticking out of a bale of hay.

One time, this airman who was shot down and went over from Czech to Slovakia only

spoke English, but mumbled so it was hard to tell. From the safehouse in the

mountain, the Underground member who had him told him when we met him, "Go

with them. They'll get you out." So while walking down with him we saw Germans

coming up with a dog. There was a big ditch behind a thicket, so my dad pushed him

over into the ditch, pulled his pants down and made it look like he was going. The

Germans passed by, and instead of questioning them, called him a smelly pig and

went on their way. It was either that or get caught.

So one by one (two at the most), they would send them out with a wood deliveryman

to the next station. And they would have to pretend to be dumb and deaf. When

Germans questioned the new guy, they would ask him why he wasn't in the service.

We would say, "He can't speak. He is deaf and dumb." We would take them from

safehouse to safehouse.

via

Katarina Urbanek

Our town's Underground group. Me in the black, third from the left.

We saved about 20 airmen this way. All we did was get them from safe place to safe

place like the Underground Railroad.

#5. Hiding Jews Required Some MacGyvering

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Being well within the influence of the Reich, Slovakia had a hand in rounding up Jews within its borders. Many who managed to resist capture hid in the Carpathian Mountains. Luckily, most of the villagers in the area enjoyed the Nazis about as much as a good bout of plague, and were more than willing to harbor some fugitives at the risk of their own lives. Sometimes that required some ingenuity:

The Nazis came in, rounded people up, and we couldn't stop them. If you tried to stop

them you got yourself, your family, and your entire village in trouble. But how much

we could, we saved. Mostly every town was like that. One village who held Jews and

were caught doing so had gotten some of their buildings burnt down, so Jews hiding

out in the mountains and the people in the mountains looking after them were

growing nervous, as the Germans were suspicious that more were out there.

Stanislav Doronenko

Needing to get out, we took five Jews (two adult women and three girls) and brought

them down one by one. When the Germans came to our town, they had taken a

large, five-bedroom house nearby, and at this time was occupied by five German

soldiers and their dog. No place in town was safe, so we put them in the garden shed

next to the German soldiers' house.

We snuck food to them and took their bucket away (which they went in). But

sometimes we couldn't get there because the Germans were out there. Sometimes

all they did was sit in the back and play with the dog. With them there, they would

notice us and find the Jews living there. They would ask, "Why would you bring the

food there?"

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To get around this, we took urine from a female dog in heat. We would then sprinkle

the urine on the other side of the house, and [their dog] would go after it. This

cleared the way for us. Eventually, we got them out on the line we used on the

downed airmen, but we never knew if they made it or not.

#4. Nobody Is Who You Expect

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Being in the Underground was stressful (surprisingly few water slides and ping pong tables in "the Underground"), and betrayal was always a worry. While small towns like Katarina's were relatively safe since everyone knew everyone else, in the bigger cities paranoia was rampant. Katarina went to college at the University in the city of Trencin, less than half an hour away. That meant she got to know some people well outside of her comfort zone. Rich, powerful folks -- who weren't always the '80s-style movie villains you might expect.

Going to school, this girl, Tanya, was there. Her dad was a mayor of a big town, so

she was wealthy. We always wondered, though: Why would she come from 100 miles

away just for school? She was even friends with this girl who was the girlfriend to a

member of the Hlinka Guard. She, despite being rich, would go to the poor areas at

night. We always wondered why she went there. It wasn't until after the war we

found out why.

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The Hlinka Guard was a pro-Nazi Slovak militia that operated during the war.

It turns out that after dark she would hide in an out building. She knew some nights

the Germans would shoot dissenters in the isolated area (as there were trenches

already dug there), then bulldoze them over. After they left, Tanya would try and find

if anyone was alive. When she found someone, she would take them to a monastery

with monks who had a signal to get her in. On her knees and elbows, she would drag

them to the monastery. I don't know how many she would save, as sometimes she

would go back three, four times a night. We did not expect a friend of a Nazi

supporter or rich girl like her to do that.

Another time, while in class, the Germans came through for an inspection. It turns

out Tanya had a gun. So she said, "I've started throwing up, please help me to the

bathroom." She started to pretend to throw up, so the German officer opened the

door for her to go into the bathroom. As soon as the door was closed, she opened up

the bathroom window and hid the gun underneath the window between bricks. We

just didn't know why she had a gun, if she needed to hide it, or if she wanted to

appear to hide it.

via Katarina Urbanek

Katarina, top left in white dress. Tanya, bottom right in white shirt. Her Nazi supporter friend who later had her

hair cut off, top row, third from left in black hair. Dean, center, bottom row, trying to kill the photographer with

her mind.

#3. Day-to-Day Life Continues, Even in the Midst of a Resistance

Since Slovakia took the protectorate route, the German military was not nearly as active there as it was in other countries. But the Nazis weren't exactly known for their impeccable respect of personal boundaries. They were probably up in everyone's grill regardless, right? Sometimes, sure, but it wasn't like in the movies, where Nazis were an omnipresent threat -- lurking in the markets, hiding behind park benches, popping up out of the sewers like fascist spring-snakes. There were dramatic, tragic moments here and there, but it's remarkable what you can adapt to in your day-to-day life.To survive, we had to keep a low profile. You are not alone with the Underground, but

you have to keep your cover. It was very hard. I had one cousin who was in real, deep

Underground work. I don't know what they were doing, but one time they were

trapped with important papers that were not to fall into German hands. So he took a

grenade, pulled the pin and blew himself and the papers up.

To get to Trencin and the University, I would have to take the train. One guy about a

year older than me who lived a couple houses down from my house would say (as we

had to walk to the train), "Don't get up this morning," as that meant he or someone

he knew had set explosives and the tracks would be blown up that morning. We

avoided them, and they were, to his word, blown up.

Roman

Ponomarets/iStock/Getty Images

Most resisted in some way. Some just tripped soldiers while they were walking

around. Others were childish, such as my grandfather's method. He owned a pipe

shop in town, and German officers would buy pipes there. So, before selling a pipe,

he would stick the pipes tip up a dog's backside out of view of the German officers,

then sell it to them.

We also had secret codes, such as saying to a merchant you wanted to buy a certain

spool of thread and having a certain response back, like, "I cannot sell you two.

Check back next week," set up just in case. You just didn't know who was who in

many situations.

You just didn't think about it. You lived it through. It was like bad weather. Like

with the blown-up bridge in Trencin. Once the bridge was out for the train, the train

would come near the blown-out area and we would walk through river and rubble and

just take the train from the other side.

via Katarina Urbanek

Trencin, before the bridge was bombed by the Underground.

In occupied countries like Czech, they fought occupation all the time and would end

up with no money, so they would sell the Nazis a working car. In Slovakia, we would

sell them cars, but then we would put our sugar rations inside the gas tank so they

would not work. Many countries just said no, and they were punished and they still

had things taken away. Germans simply paid for it in Slovakia, and would then lose it.

via Katarina Urbanek

Our family's Skoda car, before it was sweetened.

#2. Giving in May Have Actually Saved Some Lives

Wiki Commons

According to the movies, the only countries involved in WWII were America, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia. That's pretty accurate -- it's only omitting all of the rest of Europe and also everywhere else in the world. The Nazis rolled over basically everyone in Europe but the Swiss (do not mess with the Swiss) and a bit of Russia before Hitler's cunning plan to wage a winter war without coats somehow backfired. Some governments resisted the Nazis openly, while others waited to see how this whole fascism thing played out. But most behaved like Slovakia, which complied openly, then bombed the [heck] out of everything as soon as the Nazis turned their backs. There's nobility in standing up to a stronger opponent, but you may be able to save some lives by pretending to be his friend, too ...As a protectorate, Slovakia ended up having way less people die than almost all

occupied countries. Out of a population of over 10 million, civilian losses were

shockingly low in Czechoslovakia, with a huge majority of those deaths being in

occupied Czech Republic. Slovakia ended up helping more of the persecuted

populations. Out of 80,000 Roma people in Slovakia, as few as 400 died during our

watch. And while Tiso did initially allow the deportation of Jews, he later had a huge

change of heart and ordered the exportation of Jews to stop. While feelings about

Tiso are still conflicted in Slovakia, he did at the end put a stop to deportations in

Slovakia.

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-2010-0049/o.Ang./CC-

BY-SA

Tiso was tried and executed after the war.

Being a protectorate had its advantages. As long as the Jews did not show

temperament in our village, they were left alone. One man I knew had an openly

Jewish wife, and nothing ever happened to them. If you didn't raise feathers or

protest, you got by. Slovakia saved more lives and went farther in the Underground

than many other countries got. We did the best we could and saved as many as we

could. In a way, Tiso was smart. He knew if more Germans came, under an

occupation, there would be even more deaths and forced labor.

#1. It Didn't End at Liberation

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In 1945, the war ended for most of Europe. One day the Nazis realized that listening to the loudest jerk in the room wasn't a sound political strategy, so they fled. The next day, Communist soldiers rolled up to Slovakia -- mostly Romanians sent to "liberate" the country. You know those joyful liberation celebrations you see in the old news reels? Those were for the countries liberated by the Allies. For those liberated by the Soviets, there was significantly less revelry. No noisemakers. No hats. Hardly any confetti at all ...

Communists were bad and even worse than the Germans. Communists just came and

took everything away. One person had a farm for 100 years, and the communists

took it overnight. They simply said, "It's not yours, it's not mine -- it's ours." They

started pushing slowly and crept in, taking town by town under their system and

killing anyone who got in their way.

U.S. Army

Slovakia would re-join Czechoslovakia, and remain under Communist rule until the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

The worst thing I saw was what happened to the Communist female soldiers. [Edited out content] . . . I remember thinking that any government that was fine with Nazi-

level violence was no good. There were also more killings and more forced labor.

There were some Germans that were killed, and we had buried them. The

Communists suspected that Germans had sewn papers in the linings of coats, so they

ordered citizens to dig up graves and to look for them.

By then I was married to a famous artist, and we managed to get an artistry visa out

to the United States to showcase Slovak art in a cultural exchange. Once in New York,

we were not sure if we could move here. Luckily, my brother, a naturalized American

citizen, was visiting family in Slovakia when he found out Czechoslovak authorities

were looking for us. This convinced the American authorities for us to stay, and we

got to immigrate.

via Katarina Urbanek

I never went back.

Sorry about the nebulous sense of sorrow in your heart that you'll carry with you for the rest of the day, and the inevitable crying fit you won't be able to explain to the rest of the office. But hey, learning isn't always fun. To help get your life back on track, here are some penguins utterly failing to jump onto an iceberg.