Eva Mosnáková

Eva Mosnáková (1929 – 29 November 2024) was a Slovak human rights activist and survivor of Holocausts and Communist persecution.

Biography Early life Eva Mosnáková was born in 1929 in Brno, in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, to a Slovak Jewish veterinary student Andrej Fuchs and a Czech Christian mother Otílie Fuchsová. The family of Andrej Fuchs was opposed to a marriage to a non-Jewish woman, nonetheless he insisted on marrying the woman of his choice. Eva grew up in the Slovak mining town of Handlová, the hometown of her father, where her father landed a job as a veterinarian. In Handlová, Eva grew up in predominantly German speaking environment of the local Jewish community, but was also exposed to the ideals of Tomáš Masaryk through her mother, whose father was a tailor in the army. Fascist persecution With the rise of the fascist Slovak People's Party, Eva was sent to live with her aunts in Brno for two years. However, following the German Occupation of Czechoslovakia, she returned to her family, which settled in the village of Močenok, near Nitra. Initially, the family lived in relative safety due to Mosnáková's father's status as an "economically important Jew," which allowed him to continue his veterinary practice. This precarious stability ended with the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising. Forced into hiding, the family sought refuge with Henrich Konrad, a German, who came to Močenok after marriage to a local woman Terézia. In spite of the German heritage of Henrich, the family supported the uprising and Terézia's younger brother Vladimír, a former officer of the Slovak army, personally took part in the armed resistance. She also founded and led the Club of Senior Citizens who Survived the Holocaust.

Following the Velvet Revolution, the contributions of Eva Mosnáková and her husband finally received recognition. In 1998, the Yad Vashem committee extended the Righteous Among the Nations title to Eva and her husband. In 2020, she received a human rights award by the US Embassy in Bratislava.

Death Mosnáková died in Bratislava on 29 November 2024, at the age of 95. The president of Slovakia Peter Pellegrini praised her bravery and lifelong devotion to human rights in a social media post in reaction to her death.