Maradík Ondrej & Maradíková Mária ; Son: Martin ; Daughter: Faklová Elena (Maradíková)

Maradík, Ondrej Maradíková, Mária Maradík, Martin Faklová-Maradíková, Elena When the war broke out, Martin Weil and Ján Kohol were working in the same jewelry shop in Prešov and lived together in a rented room in the Maradík family house. Ondrej Maradík worked as a detective for the Prešov police. His access to police information was later to be of great assistance to Martin and Ján. Ondrej’s children, Martin and Elena, were students. The whole Maradík family treated their tenants well. In March 1942, when Jewish girls were being rounded up for deportation, Martin and Ján hid a Jewish girl in their room, with the Maradíks’ knowledge. However, this girl paid a high price one day when she left the house to go to the post office in order to contact her parents: she was captured and deported. As the deportations intensified, Ondrej erased the names of his Jewish tenants from the list of local residents registered with the Prešov police, so that no one would search his home. However, he nevertheless recommended that Martin and Ján go into hiding. Thus, on the day that the Hlinka guards were due to start rounding up the Jews of Prešov, Mária hid her tenants in the courtyard of the house, between the bushes. When darkness fell, she found a new hiding place for them in the apartment of a Jewish family that had been deported, and whose door was sealed. Ján, Martin, and their rescuers entered the empty apartment through a small window and, thereafter, the Maradík family took care of Ján and Martin’s nutritional and other basic needs. A few days later, Ondrej moved them to the attic of his house. The two remained in the attic for over two months. Martin and Ján later obtained false papers so that they could leave the hideout, because they did not want to endanger the Maradíks any longer. Ján moved to the center of Slovakia, and Martin rented a room on the other side of the city, from where he remained in contact with the Maradíks. In 1943, the Maradíks also helped manyPolish Jewish refugees who stayed in Prešov for a while. Following the Slovak National Uprising at the end of August 1944, the Maradíks thought it appropriate that Martin move to the center of Slovakia, to the area that was controlled by the partisans. The Maradíks’ son, Martin, who was the same age as Martin Weil, decided to join him. Martin Weil stayed for a while in Mária’s parents’ house and Martin Maradík soon headed off in a different direction. When the war was over, Martin Weil returned to Prešov to thank his rescuers. He was saddened to hear that the Gestapo had taken Ondrej along with a few other commanders of the city’s police and deported them to Bergen-Belsen. Ondrej did not return. His wife, Mária, died of sorrow a few years afterwards. After the war, Kohl moved to Brazil and Martin Weil settled in the United States from where he maintained contact with Martin and Elena. On August 5, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Ondrej Maradík, Mária Maradíková, and their children, Martin Maradík and Elena Faklová-Maradíková, as Righteous Among the Nations.