It was love at the first sight
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Mária Macková was born as Maria Stepanovna Brusková on June 16, 1924 in the town of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine, which was a part of the Soviet Union back then. Her mother was of Ukrainian origin and her father was a Russian coming from Moscow. Mária had five siblings. In September 1942, she was abducted by the Germans to the forced labour camp located in Germany. The journey took about two weeks and there were more than 50 other people in a cattle car with her. After two weeks she had spent in the Dachau concentration camp, she was moved to the labour camp in Munich. At first she was placed to the factory producing telephones. She had to work six days a week from 6 am to 6 pm; however, she was not allowed to leave the camp even in her time off. Later, she met the Slovak boy Ján Macek and fell in love with him. In February 1944 she gave birth to their child. However, as the Germans did not know she was pregnant, they punished her and moved to an armament factory, where she had to work even harder than before. Mária decided to marry Ján Macek exactly on her 20th birthday, on June 16, 1944. A few days later, they fled from the camp through a hole in the fence and headed to Slovakia. Mária managed to get a Slovak passport in Vienna. Few days later they arrived in the village of Moravské Lieskové, where they lived for several years. Later, they moved to the Czech town of Frýdlant, where the family spent seven years and then they returned to Slovakia, to the town of Trenčín, where Mária started working in the textile factory of Merina. She also lived in Trenčín in February 2015.
