Albert Bela Eger was born in 1919 in Presov, Slovakia. In 1940, when the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, Albert was expelled from the University of Prague and drafted into the Slovakian Army. As a Jew, he was put into a labor brigade but was exempted from the early deportations to the concentration camps because he was needed by the Nazis for his education and language skills.

In 1941, he was sent to a labor camp in Eastern Slovakia, where he did office work and translated for the commandant who liked and respected him. When the deportations to Auschwitz began, Albert was warned by the commandant to escape. Albert forged his own false papers and had them signed by the commandant. He became a freedom fighter with the Russian Underground in 1943, and for the next two years lived in the Slovakian Alps, both hunting Germans and being hunted by them. While serving in the resistance, Albert was shot and soon after became very sick with tuberculosis. He and his group were liberated in April 1945 by the Soviet Army, and Albert was hospitalized.

After the war, Albert returned home and regained his health. He married Edith and had his first child. He found life under the new Soviet regime intolerable and resisted intense pressure put on him to join the Communist Party. He escaped with his family to Vienna, Austria in May 1949 and later that year came to the United States. Albert joined his brother in Baltimore and continued his education, later becoming a CPA. Albert and Edith had two more children and moved to El Paso, Texas in 1955. Albert died in 1993.

Connecting Stories:   Edith Eger