Moshe and Tzipora Ressler and their three daughters, Aliza, Rachel and Miriam from the town of Michalovce in Slovakia, managed to evade deportation to the camps for three years. Eventually they fled, and wandered in the forests and from village to village searching for places to hide. They came to an agricultural area outside of Nitra where they found wine-makers' storage pits, and hid in one of the pits.
The older girls, Aliza and Rachel would go to the neighboring village, Jarok, and ask for food from the inhabitants. They knocked on a number of doors until reaching the Tököly home. Vincent and Anna Tököly immediately came to the family's assistance. They collected food from their neighbors and every few days, under cover of darkness, they would bring it to the pit where the Ressler family was hiding. The village priest also assisted the hidden family and made a point of asking the villagers to help when giving his sermons.
When Vincent came to the hiding place he would encourage the family with news of the Red Army's advance. From time to time Moshe and Tzipora and their daughters would come to the Tököly home to wash.
One day, the Germans combed the area for fleeing Jews. They searched in the abandoned wine pits and fired into them. The Resslers survived the shots but the harrowing incident forced the realization that they would have to leave their hiding place. They subsequently found a family who was willing to hide them under the barn if they were compensated, but when the Ressler's money ran out, the family gave them up to the authorities. Reduced to the clothes on their backs, the Resslers were arrested and held in the local jail. The meagre belongings remaining to them, including Miriam's doll, were left behind. They were faced with certain deportation, when against all odds they managed to escape and return to their original hiding place in the pit and turned once again to the Tökölys for help. This time too, the couple did not hesitate to come to their aid, despite the danger. They continued to supply the Resslers with food and support until the liberation of the area.
At the end of the war Miriam, who had viewed her doll as a talisman that had protected the family throughout, insisted that they return to the farmers who had turned them in and take back the doll. Her parents reluctantly did as she wished and found the doll broken, without arms and legs, among the toys of the family's son. In 1947 the Ressler family immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine).
On June 2, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Vincent and Anna Tököly as Righteous Among the Nations.
Miriam (Agatha) decided to donate the doll to the Artifacts Collection at Yad Vashem as a symbol of her family's trials and ultimate rescue during World War II.
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Courtesy of Miriam Frumer (Agatha Ressler), Petach Tikva, Israel
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