DYNAMIT-NOBEL in Bratislava
A bit of history, as related to our family.
In our
family the name of the factory on the outskirts of Bratislava had the right aura around it then. Grandfather worked as a point man
at the railway station called Dynamitová Továrna, where he also lived in the
railway house opposite the station’s main building. On this picture, taken in the early 1920ties, he is
the one standing with one foot on the steam engine steps; next to him, in the
white coat, stands his boss, Mr Vadkerty. Next to Mr Vadkerty is deputy Master,
then Station Master with his wife and the dog, all of them newcomers Czechs:
The sign
on the building must have given a good headache to a painter, who had to
replace the laconic Hungarian words DYNAMITGYÁR with the NEW Czech name
DYNAMITOVÁTOVÁRNA (and he helped himself by joining the two words together, the same as in his - possibly native, Hungarian).
The "Czech name" is a gentle allusion to the reasons of the country falling apart many years later: the new Czech management started replacing the previous Hungarian names with their Czech versions. Here, instead of Slovakian versions (Továrna in Czech, Továreň in Slovak).
Grandfather upon his retirement in 1940 moved with his family
about a kilometre eastward into a new house at No. 794, Račianska ulica. One of
his daughters, Helena, worked in Dynamitka as the secretary to the managing
director. During the war the factory was under German management (IG Farben),
and Helena was often taken to work by factory’s Mercedes cars, for she was famous
for her distaste to start on time. In her room at home, she always kept a few
bottles of fine German alcohols, and I as a boy often treated myself to a
swig from the tastiest of them called Golden Almonds. One well-dressed German,
probably her boss, Herr Köpke (that’s how we called him), and some others
(Herr Ilgren?), came to our house on a few occasions. They chatted to the
grandfather who long before WW1 served for four years in the Austrian army
around Vienna (Korneuburg). We took Herr Köpke for a few “spaziergangs” around
the nearby vineyards. I would have loved to remember what we were chatting
about – alas, it’s all gone with the winds…
Possibly through him I was encouraged to go and play for a few times with the boys in the nearby
“German” houses near the then tramway terminus. The houses were built solidly
and tastefully for the German employees of the factory. With my German at the time I was just barely able to get by. My relationship with the boys was rather measured; it felt as if
they were instructed by their “Mutti” “well, we were told to let IT in, just
make sure that IT keeps its hands from our valuables!” On occasions I saw them
in our school, where German children had their separate classroom. They looked
through me as if I was invisible, and I eagerly replied in kind.
During the war, around 1943-44, I was on Kuchajda when I heard a
huge explosion from the direction of Dynamitka, followed by a cloud of yellow
smoke. “My God, they are bombing Dynamitka, and Helen is there!”, I thought.
Also, not far from the factory was where my grandparents lived, so I took off
and ran towards them. When crossing Vajnorská ulica I saw a few ambulances
speeding towards the city. On Račianska ulica, about 200-300 metres from the
railway bridge, I saw a group of people in front of Vadkerty’s house: in the
front garden, and partly on the footpath, there was a 5 cm thick sheet of twisted steel, maybe about 4 x 4 metres, partly buried in the ground, and still smoking a little. Part of it
was about 1 metre above the ground, the rest was buried. Later I heard that it was some high pressure vessel that exploded
near the rear water tower, so no bombing has taken place. The shrapnel damaged
the famous Vadkerty’s cherry tree as well. The tree grew in the garden, but
large part of it was hanging above the public footpath. When in fruit it used
to be full, and its cherries were very tasty. “Harvesting” by us had to be
fast, for always in a minute or two old Mr Vadkerty came out, yelling in a
strange mixture of Slovakian and Hungarian languages “Went away, me shot
you!”. Shortly after the war it might have not paid off: a truck, full of
Russian soldiers, stopped under the tree and the soldiers were helping
themselves to the cherries. As always, Mr Vadkerty turned up, armed with an old
rifle, with his standard cadenza “Went away, me....”. This time, however,
he received a nasty surprise: the always trigger-happy Russians grabbed their
automatic rifles, rattled the locks, and aimed the rifles at Mr Vadkerty. He did not
“shot”; instead, he disappeared behind the house in a flash…
When the war ended the Germans who used to come to our house,
together with the boys from the “German” houses, disappeared. During
construction of the so-called Nový závod we had an American coming to our
house, a Mr Cohorn (don’t know the correct spelling of his name), who was there in
charge of something or other. And after a while, Helen announced that she had a
new boss – a new managing director who used to work in Dynamitka as a labourer
until then. “Jesuskrist, what can this only lead to?”, was the family reaction
to it; it was the first sign of the new era coming…
Remark.
During the so-called
Communist era, it was customary to put erstwhile labourers into managerial positions of
anything; in the chapter Aero clubs I mentioned how the local storeman became
manager of the international airport at Bratislava.
I myself worked there for a while…
I started there at the beginning of 1959. The word Dynamitka was popular
name for the factory on the eastern edge of Bratislava, with the initial name of
Dynamit-Nobel. In 1959 it bore the name of Chemické Závody Juraja Dimitrova,
popularly Dimitrovka (a few years earlier, on my way to the “white collar”
swimming pool I saw arrival of Georgi Dimitrov, the president of Bulgaria). Only
a couple of years before I started, there worked a great number of the so-called
political, and perhaps even non-political, prisoners. On the perimeter of the
factory were guard towers, in which, as well as at the gates, stood armed
soldiers in uniforms with purple patches on their shoulders. Many prisoners
were housed in barbed wire fenced wooden barracks between Račianska ulica and
the vineyards, just past the railway bridge. The camp was about 300-400 metres long
and about 200 metres wide. As children we used to go and watch the prisoners,
and occasionally some of them would toss a letter over the fence pleading with
us to mail it for him.
Another, similar camp, but without the barbed wire, was on top of
Pekná cesta, on the left side, just above the edge of the vineyards. Unlike in
the previous camp, in this one I saw women and children. People spoke Russian
or some similar language. I am not sure if these people worked in Dynamitka:
with the passage of time I am inclined to believe that these people were on “Mr
Churchill transit” from Western Europe to the Soviet Union (and to Siberia, if
not worse... I can understand Winston's dilemma at the time: "Keep the murderers and rapists here in Western Europe or send them to Mr. Stalin's concentration camps?").
When I started at Dynamitka the armed guards were gone, but the
wooden guard towers were still standing. And the prisoners were still there!
Instead of the guard they were kept there by some paragraph, according to which
the state-owned factories were able to keep anybody whom they regarded as
important for the production. One of such prisoners was my uncle Fero Lepis,
husband of auntie Helen, who was working there as a plumber ‘till 1969, when he died, barely 60 years old. His crime? That he played a role in the defeat of
Germany on the wrong side, as a soldier in the British army, into which he was
drafted as a salesman for Bat'a shoe factory in Northern Africa.
By the way, my description of Fero as "prisoner" in the Slovakian version was found unpalatable by his status-conscious descendants, and it had been reluctantly removed by me.
My father also spent there some 3 years as a labourer only a few
years before me. Once, during a school excursion to the factory I saw him
there, dirty and sweating, shovelling salt into wheelbarrows. I was embarrassed
for him, and I never told anybody that this dirty man is my father – and I am
ashamed to this day for that embarrassment!
My father worked for many years as a clerk in the taxation office, in
the lofty palace on Stefánikova ulica, right next to the presidential palace.
Around 1950 the new communist government declared the taxation office as
“exploitation tool of the capitalists”, and all its employees were sent to
factories where they were forced to perform the lowliest tasks. My father
managed to wriggle out after some three years but had to spend another few
years in exile in Komárno, some 110 kilometres from where we lived. In
Dynamitka I met a few of his former colleagues, still working as labourers. Mr
Gesaj, for instance, was filling paper bags with fertiliser; Mr Darin
worked with a shovel around a furnace (he used to be an editor in a publishing
house, probably Sv. Vojtech; at home we had a few books with his name in them).
Both these gentlemen were over 50, with fragile health. The environment was
extremely dirty: apart from various chemical odours the air was full of
phosphate and silicate dust. There was no protective clothing, goggles or masks
of any kind, except for rough coats made from some acid-resistant material. We
were all constantly covered by a thick layer of dust. After the shift we had to
take a shower, into which we were coughing mud and from our noses blowing –
also mud…
There were others, of course, apart from the aforementioned two
gentlemen. There was Mr Filipovič “Short”, a student of medicine or theology
in the past (his Latin was quite good, same as Mr. Tomeček; Mr Filipovic “Tall”, a clerk in the
previous “capitalist” government, as was Mr Karlovsky. Mrs Ciglanová, around
50, also a hand-shovel operator, owned a small shop in the past. Mr Csiffáry, a
good friend of mine, also about 50, allegedly owned an “excessively large”
piece of agricultural land in Farkasd, about 30km from Bratislava (ownership of an “excessively large” piece of land - often no more than just a few hectares - was also considered a crime then!). By
the way, Mr Csiffáry: a sworn Hungarian speaker, his Slovakian was strongly
laced with the Southern Slovakian Hungarian accent. I enjoyed fairly high
standing in his eyes, as well as in the eyes of his fellow-Hungarians. Some of
them intimated that it was because of my name, Hatvani, which, among the
Hungarian, had an aura of something glittery (aunts Helen and Ruzenka were
adamant that both in their youths saw our “armales”, that is ornamental
diplomas of our lower nobility status, and that they both heard that some of
our ancestors took part in the annual gathering of the clans at Esztergom – I
am selling as I bought, I don’t know anything more than this). To this day I
am sorry that I never tried to master the strange, but strangely attractive,
Hungarian language. Recently I made a list of all the Hungarian words I
remember, and ended up with more than 400, indeed, four hundred! I don’t know
the meaning of many of them, maybe not even half, but still…
My work.
I was put to work as a shoveller in one of their many
sub-factories. Its name was Thermophosphate, and consisted of two large experimental
furnaces designed to produce artificial fertilisers under high temperature
conditions (1500 degrees C.). My job was to supply these furnaces with
phosphate and silicate powders. Those were stored about 50 metres away, and
between the furnaces and the store there was a narrow concrete footpath. For
transport we had a small petrol engine powered trolley which took about 200
kilograms of the powder, which we were shovelling in from huge heaps of
material. The loading was extremely dusty and on occasions we could not see the
trolley. The full trolley was taken to the furnace along the open-air footpath, where the weather ranged from +35 degrees in summer down to -15
degrees in winter; temperature close to the furnace was high, almost unbearable. That
trip had to be done up to 30 times during one 8-hour shift.
The sub-factory, being experimental, was closed periodically for a
couple of weeks, and we were sent to other sub-factories within the compound.
Thus, we were sent to various other sub-factories within the compound: I
worked in the production of DDT (exceedingly dirty and dusty hall, no
protective clothing, masks, goggles), in sulphuric acid production (ditto),
superphosphate production (likewise), and many others. Once there was a cracked
pipeline somewhere in Prievoz, and around midnight we were sent to dig the
pipeline up for the mechanics to repair. On arrival, the pipeline, about 1.5
metre in diameter and about 3 metres underground, was partially visible. The ground
was sandy and prone to crumbling and sliding down. The mechanics already cut a
large hole in it, and we could see inside. Obviously, the pressure was
turned off, and at the bottom of the pipe slowly flowed a thick and extremely
smelly liquid. Upon asking where it is going I was told “to the Danube river”.
Surprised I was not: in Dynamitka everything that needed to be got rid of was
poured on the ground. Between Thermophosphates and the Sulphuric Acid production
was a “lake”, about 30 metres in diameter and about 1 metre deep, full of all
sorts of chemicals; alongside the outside fence (along Odborárska ulica, then
under Vajnorská ulica and beyond) was an open “creek”, about 2 metres wide and
about one metre deep, always full of slowly flowing smelly liquid (a few years
later an engineer from the nearby Palma factory told me that their factory was
also sending their liquid waste, mostly old grease, oils and solvents, into the
same creek).
A
small remark concerning the Sulphuric Acid production: for a few weeks I was
working there loading trolleys with the so-called kyz (maybe Kiese in German).
It was a greyish, sticky and heavy substance – so heavy that I was struggling
to lift a heaped shovel. There were two permanent workers, who remembered
times under German management: both were adamant that under the Germans they worked less and that the pay was better (Vielen Dank, Herr Köpke!).
Sometimes we had to load the fertiliser into 50 kilogram paper bags, carry them
and load into a nearby railway carriage. The amount of dust in the air was
enormous, and with our sweat it was forming muddy cakes on our bodies.
We
were working in shifts, 8 hours in the morning, next day 8 hours in the
afternoon, the following day 8 hours at night, then a day off, and again, 8
hours in the morning, etc. I was spending my free days and half-days at Vajnory
airfield, where I became a member a year earlier, while still working as the
land surveyor. In 1959 I accumulated some 150 hours in the air, gained air
instructor rating, and in winter I started teaching various subjects in courses
for new pilot applicants. On occasions I drifted with a pupil close to “my”
factory knowing that in, say, two hours I would be down there shovelling
phosphate. It was eerie to think about the step down (literally) from this
pleasant and civilised seat in the airplane to that evil smell and hard
physical labour. By the way, all my flying was for free, as it was taking
place under the air force umbrella; officially I was an Air Force Courier Pilot Reserve.
A
comical thing happened to me one day: there was one shift leader, and engineer
by the name of Čapková, from Prague. She was finishing her night shift, I was
starting my morning shift, and we said Good Morning to each other while
clocking in and out. At the end of my shift in the afternoon I had to go to the same Prague, some 400 kilometres away, to attend a meeting at the Central Committee
of the aero clubs the following morning. After work I took an airplane from
the aero club, a twin-engine Ae-45 with cruising speed of about 260kmh, and
landed at the Prague airport in the evening. Having nothing to do I went to see
some show at a little theatre at Hybernská ulice. Moving slowly in the crowd I
saw in the distance, above the heads – the engineer Čapková! She looked at me a
couple of times in silent astonishment – is it that idiot – isn’t it that
idiot?! – until I nodded, and she nodded back, still looking surprised…
How
to wriggle out of that inferno.
After
some six months I was fed up with my job and gave notice, with intention to
start studying at a university (I had History of Art on mind, don’t remember
why, maybe some sort of fantasy). In reply to my notice I was told that the
factory has no intention of releasing me whatsoever.
By
the way, I applied for admission to the University, sat on the interview, but
was rejected for reasons that escape me nowadays. A few days later walking in
the city with my father we came across our neighbour from long ago at Nová
doba, Mr Schwarz. He was already (in 1960) a member of the Slovakian Academy of
Science, maybe even its President. My father told him about my unsuccessful
application, and Mr Schwarz suggested that the admission could still be
arranged. I refused his help, but did not think of asking him for help with my
problem with Dynamitka.
I
was 23, with no qualifications (apart from those gained at the aero club), my
job was inside a forced labour camp – what next?
A
few weeks later I submitted another Notice to Dynamitka. The answer was the
same, and what’s more, I was called on the carpet in the Personnel Manager’s
office, where a Mr Janotík threatened me with some nebulous sanctions if I don’t
stop pestering him with my vexatious notices. Somehow he discovered my
involvement with the aero club, and bragged that he used to fly as well, in the
same aero club. I found his name in the old books: indeed, he was a member, but
apart from one joy flight I found nothing else.
I
began to commit petty crimes (in the eyes of the management): I worked slowly
so that the furnaces produced less during my shift; I did not turn up for work
every now and then; occasionally I broke my shovel, or the little motorised
cart… I was carpeted by various bosses, once even a jail was mentioned. In the
meantime we had at our aero club first World Championship in Aerobatics, which
I helped to initiate and get under way. My father, watching from distant sidelines, was trying to
advise, mother was telling me on every occasion that I am a good-for-nothing
person, I was on the verge of desperation! Eventually, replying to an advertisement in the local paper I landed a job as an air
traffic controller at the nearby international airport, I was supposed to
present myself for the 9-months long course at Prague – the course has begun
already – and I was still being threatened with jail at Dynamitka! One day I
was told by my father that he whispered a word on my behalf into the ear of somebody high in
the Communist party organisation (the real government of the country), and that
I should go and see a Comrade Vincenc Krahulec, the managing director of Dynamitka.
The
next day I was just changing clothes at the beginning of my shift when an extremely
excited Lojzo, my shift leader came to me with “What have you done again, you
bastard, The Highest One wants to see you pronto!” I went to the administration building,
about one kilometre away. It took me a while – dirty and smelly as I was – to find my
way through various offices, until at the end one lady clerk took me to an upholstered door,
opened and announced “Here is our case, Comrade Director!” (a case!, possibly
in their eyes). Door shut behind me and I was standing eye to eye with Comrade
Krahulec, managing director of the factory (and also a member of the national
parliament). Swarthy, with dark hair and dark eyebrows, he immediately abused
me, that as if he was not busy enough, he has to deal incessantly with me, and
that the entire (communist) Party is having shits just because of “this
nobody”, he theatrically motioned with his hand towards me. I did not say
anything, not knowing who it was that my father stirred up (and I don’t know it
to this day). Comrade Krahulec kept abusing me in not-too-minced words, until I
came to a told him that I have given him my notice on several occasions and
that my treatment by him was akin to me being nothing more than a prisoner. He
raised his voice (and my heart sank!), but eventually I was kicked out of his
office with an exquisitely ugly swearword of the calibre even we, his lowly shovellers,
were loath to use – with deep regrets, I can’t repeat it here… I slammed the door
behind me (aware of the old Italian custom of leaving a thunderous fart behind I did have a moment's of thought, but it's not Slovakian custom, and the Comrade could claim it as an ultimate victory should I, by any chance, have soiled my underwear). One female clerk immediately barged into me that “ I must NOT
treat the Comrade Director like this!” (laud enough for the Comrade to hear, of course). I told her to go to (somewhere) and
could you please tell me where I could get a rubber stamp in my Citizen’s
Passport (as an official confirmation of my dismissal): "Comrade Janotík!", she blurted out. He was the
personnel manager I had the dubious honour of meeting during the previous
"conferences". He barged into me the same as his boss, but I cut him short saying
that I am not interested in his opinion, he is only supposed to give me the
rubber stamp: he motioned to a female clerk sitting behind the glass wall. I
slammed his door the same hard way as that of Comrade Krahulec', and the
clerk turned to be a Mrs. Odstrčílková, a sweet woman from the street I lived at the time. She
immediately started admonishing me that the “Comrade Janotík is a sick man, you
know, his heart…”, I did not listen: “Mrs Odstrčílková, for chrissake, just
give me the rubber stamp, PULEEEEZE!”. Sensing my desperation she banged the
stamp in my Passport, signed, and GOODBYE - I ran down the stairs like a rocket,
slammed the glazed front door of the building hard behind me – finally outside!!!
I
spent in that labour camp, in that prison, in that slave establishment about a year-and-a-half, and,
together with my army service, those were the worst times in my life, anything before or
after that included. I did not go back to my place of work to collect my belongings,
or to say goodbye to friends and foes (I had none of those there, save for the aforementioned Comrade!), so, belatedly: good bye and so long, ave
atque vale, fraters, et ave iterum (you understand this, you sweet old
bastards!). És viszontlátásra, Csiffáryúr... And good bye to others as I remember them: Mrs. Mehesová, cleaning girl, lovely Eliska Svarcová, laboratory assistant, Mr. Grič, the boss, Lojzo, the foreman, and messrs. Barok, Karlovsky, Pajicek, Bonaventur "Bono" Macháček, Dezo Filo, Rudo Lneniček, and many others: good bye, friends!
By the way, Comrade Krahulec is mentioned in
the chapter Land surveyor as well:
http://charles794.blogspot.com.au/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2012-11-03T19:28:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=6&by-date=false
http://charles794.blogspot.com.au/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2012-11-03T19:28:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=6&by-date=false
Back at
home I changed clothes and rushed to Ivanka airport, where I was supposed
to be in the course for air traffic
controllers many weeks earlier. The position was still held for me by the Comrade
Barborák, ATC boss, but the course in
Prague started weeks and weeks ago… After some deliberation, and with respect to my
aero club background, I was accepted to a position of fully-qualified Air Traffic Controller –
Tower, with initial salary of 1490 Czechoslovak Crowns per month + uniform
every two years + one return airline ticket per year anywhere within
Czechoslovakia. Yesterday – the lowliest shoveller in Dynamitka, with the sword
of Damocles in the form of jail above my head, today – an Air Traffic
Controller in the tower of an international airport…
And
what about Dynamitka?
I saw it in 2007. From the railway embankment, as well as from Vajnorská
ulica, it looks like some 10kmsq large and smelly demolition site. This picture was taken from the railway embankment close to the rear water tower:
The above text has been translated from the Slovakian original http://karol3.blog.pravda.sk/2011/03/28/6-dynamitka/
In mid-2016 the Slovakian television (a Mr. Kerekes) expressed interest in the above text, and a 26 minute-long segment will shortly be devoted to Dynamitka in general, and with references to this text in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WAqyHhJUKE.
My text in the fairly insipid presentation has been read by an actor.
Recently, it has been discovered that the century-old tail of contaminants is nearing Danube river and threatening to contaminate all downstream states right down to the Black sea. Cleaning cost has been estimated at about 5 billion Euro. So far the taxpayer money are being used to pay for initial studies. Wherever I can I scream and write loudly, that the cost of cleaning is responsibility of the owner.
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