Lichý Štefan & Maria

Lichý, Maria Lichý, Štefan In the 1940s, Štefan Lichý was working for the tax and customs authorities in Michalovce, eastern Slovakia. Five thousand of the town’s 15,000 inhabitants were Jews, and many of Lichý's contacts were Jewish. In 1942, Lichý used his position to obtain the release of Jewish colleagues from detention. When he learned that his friends, Ignaz Kessler and Arie Leopold Laufer, had been arrested and were being held at the local post office, he arranged for their discharge. A few months later, Laufer was arrested again and taken to the Poprad detention camp. Lichý immediately went to Poprad, where he was able to secure Laufer's release once again. Realizing how precarious the situation was, Chaya Laufer attempted to cross into Hungary with her son. They were detained at the border, but Lichý came to their aid and they were returned to Michalovce. In December 1942, Leopold Laufer and his son Naftali managed to reach Budapest, and Chaya joined them a while later. Soon after the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Jews living in the Hungarian provinces began to be deported. Now the situation was reversed: Jews were being deported from Hungary, but there were no deportations from Slovakia, and the Laufers decided to return to their native country, where they settled in Bratislava. One day, while visiting Chaya's father, Yehuda Kessler, the police arrived. Naftali Laufer later recalled that his uncles, Ignaz, Desider and Moshe, jumped out of the window, but he, his parents and his grandfather were arrested. Yehuda Kessler and Leopold Laufer were deported to Auschwitz: Kessler was murdered, but Laufer survived, although he refused to ever speak of his experience in the camps. Meanwhile, Chaya, who was pregnant, was released with her son, Naftali. They returned to Bratislava and embarked upon a clandestine existence with false identities. Fortunately for Ignaz and Desider Kessler, Lichý had also relocated to the capital,and once again was able to help them. This time he put not only himself at risk, but also his family. He hid the two brothers in the cellar of his apartment building, where he built a hideout for them. Lichý and his wife Maria also hid another three Jews – Chaya's cousin Elisabeth Savinsky, her five-year-old son, Arie, and another woman by the name of Steffy Berkovitz – in his apartment. Providing shelter to all these refugees was extremely dangerous, since a German officer was living in the same building. Nevertheless, the Lichýs cared for their five wards, even smuggling the two brothers into their apartment once a week so that they could wash and change their clothes. In the fall of 1944, after the Germans had occupied Slovakia and suppressed the Slovak Uprising, deportations to Auschwitz were renewed. Lichý decided to move the five Jews under his protection to his native town, Banská Štiavnica in central Slovakia. He hid them in his mother’s home, where they stayed until liberation. On October 31, 2010, Yad Vashem recognized Maria and Štefan Lichý as Rigtheous Among the Nations.