Terminal station – lime works

During World War II, the lime works near the village of Německá served as an incinerator for burning the bodies of Jews and political prisoners. They were herded here by train from Slovakia and eastern Bohemia. Helena Karafová was a girl at the time and together with her father, she was a member of a local guerilla group. They would wait on a hill by the railroad that was used for taking the prisoners to the lime works. “When the train was going to Banska Bystrica, it was crawling up the hill like a snail, very slowly.” People would jump from the train, trying to escape the death transport. Most were shot, but some managed to run to the guerrillas and thus save themselves. “When my dad pulled out a Jewish boy, he saved his life. He was twelve years old.” The parents of that twelve-year-old boy died a few hours later in the limestone works. “They weren’t put into concentration camps or gas chambers. In Banska Bystrica, there was a furnace, where they would throw them alive.”