Association Jekhetane - Together
presents
Should we go after the etymology of the word Holocaust,
we'd find out it means
a sacrifice related to the Second World War.
If we associate this word with the attribute of the Roma Holocaust,
it's kind of indication that the holocaust meaning extermination therefore not only pertains to the Jewish people,
but is also concerned with other groups of population in Europe, and Slovakia it also covers the Roma.
We perceive it as a unifying concept for all the suffering
that the Roma experienced during the war.
The Roma Holocaust had specific features,
and in relation to Roma it was the bleakest period of modern history.
There is a big house in Auschwitz,
where my beloved dwels.
Sitting there, thinking,
forgetting about me.
Little black bird
carries my letter.
Carries it there, to my wife,
to let her know I am locked in Auschwitz.
The Slovak State, which was created in the year 1939 after the breakup of Czechoslovakia,
fully copied the measures which were in relation to Roma, Jews, and other groups adopted in Nazi Germany.
In relation to the Jewish population, withdrawing property and various prohibitions took place,
and since there was nothing to take away from the Roma, because they were indigent and those prohibitions,
for example, related to the fact that they were not allowed to have dogs,
or they must not have been served beer in the pub.
One of the first regulation is the regulation of 1940,
when the Roma, along with Jews, could not become military personnel.
Further regulations were then focused on various kinds of persecution,
related both to registration of the Roma population
and related with the effort to keep the population at the place where they resided.
This included ban on travel by public transport,
or a ban on entering the cities.
They only were allowed to go in the cities within the time specified to do some shopping, for instance.
The Guardsmen were much worse than the Germans.
A Gypsy was not allowed to enter a village, only until 4 p.m..
As I was going up to buy tobacco and I was returning, he told me,
you punk, don´t you know until 4 p.m. you Gypsies must go in the village?
Then the Gypsies could not even move after 4 p.m.
The Roma were exposed to these repressions in particular by the Hlinka Guard.
In particular the Contingency of the Hlinka Guard
had the opportunity given in legislation to step up aggression against the Roma by beating them and detaining.
According to the Ministry of the Interior Decree of the of 1941,
the Roma were to be moved out of the municipalities, two kilometres away from public roads, and so on.
There came armed forces, consisted of guardsmen and policemen, because it had to be officials,
who commanded the Roma to demolish their homes and move within two kilometres into the forest.
The Roma had to demolish their own homes.
The Guardsmen helped them by firing their guns, they were breaking down those little houses made of clay.
Then came various regulations related to internationalization.
These were the work units, which were few of them in Slovakia.
Passenger train direction Šarišské Lúky, , Kapušany by Presov, Lada, Nemcovce, Pavlovce,
Hanušovce nad Topľou - the city, Hanušovce nad Topľou, Bystré , Čierne nad Topl'ou,
Hlinné, Soľ, Komárany, Vranov nad Topľou, Strážske, and Humenné ...
These camps were different, the largest camps included one in Hanušovce, but also the camp in the Orava region,
Dubnica nad Váhom, Ilava.
The Work camps were set up at the sites where huge constructions were being made,
the so-called showcasing of the Slovak State.
So the Roma participated in the construction of the railway track Prešov - Strážske,
on the said Váh river regulation, or in the Orava dam construction.
There, in the camp
they work very hard.
They work very hard,
yeah, paid with beatings.
This is the railway station.
Was it a two-floor one, oh, come on.
I am saying, it was a big station.
They say that it was constructed by the Roma, so I do not know why?
I would like to know why they are doing it,
because if something like that is being made, so your white folks do that,
so I would like to know why they got the job.
So when I look at that picture,
different ideas are going through my head and heart,
what they must have experienced, something so terrible.
They took the father away, and we stayed with our mom,
and we were going to places, they startled us out of the house,
they took away the food from us, everything, and we just went away on foot.
So with he bunnies, with the bags, we had some food with us.
They told that they steered them into such camps,
they reportedly were not allowed to enter the community of the white.
They had infestation, have cut their hair bald.
I know it well, the mom told me that they concentrated
them down there beyond the railway line, it is called Hlibovec,
so they concentrated them.
That I know where they came from ...
It was then.
Just the camping people made the rails.
I'm out of here Hanušovce, I will not name those who were beating them.
Do you have an idea of what they were doing to them?
When somebody trespassed anything, it was such a rod,
one of them laid down there and a gendarme stood over him, and one camp person stood above him and beat him.
And that beaten one shouted loud, for God´s sake..
And he kept beating him.
The question is why such hatred suddenly rose against the Roma and Jews in the year 1939.
Who fed them by it?
There must have been something before, because when until it suddenly erupted,
because when it erupted in 1939, it soon went out all of a sudden.
This I would like to know who fed them and why they fed them with that hate.
We understand that life cannot be spent in hatred.
We should have hatred against evil, but not against the person, against the people as a nation.
The then fascist regime tried to address the issue and the situation of the Roma in Slovakia.
One of the objectives was the issuance of various measures.
It was a customary term, antisocial people, and often they included the Roma among them.
In eastern Slovakia, there was a need for manpower for the construction of that railway line,
so toward the end of 1941, but especially in the spring of 1942, it was decided to build labour camps
of forced stay in eastern Slovakia, and the Roma were included among them.
Procedure was a different in municipalities, as they were people elsewhere who,
for example, wanted just to get rid of a particular part of the population, such as the Roma,
for example, they even did not have to steal the crops or the like, as it was pt down in that Decree,
this was one of the reasons.
Very often, an important role was played by humanity.
So, as we have it today, given that the Decree can be explained in one´s own way.
Why did they behave to them that way?
That I will not tell you.
Madam, if it was such a Slovak State then there were guardsmen, doing what they wanted.
As you have parties today, then one party was of guardsmen.
By their skin are they different, because the race is the same,
and a different way of life.
And maybe some people think so far and condemn them,
because we have a different way of life, different thinking, different values.
And maybe this is why we are doomed.
We are inferior to some.
This camp was abolished on complaints and through measures in the autumn of 1942.
Part of those taken in was released, another part was moved to another camp branch in Bystré.
Despite the terrible conditions, this camp was cancelled as late as in June 1943
because the most basic parts of building the rail track were finished.
Part of them was released,
another part was moved to a labour camp, which was established in Dubnica nad Váhom.
The train whistles, poor Roma are put inside.
Poor Roma, crying loudly, taken to be hung up.
Roma, Roma, stop crying, you will never come back.
Oh, Mother, what am I to do, we are going to be murdered.
A detention camp was established at the site of the former labour department in Dubnica nad Váhom.
The whole Roma families were deported there.
While the labour camp had a capacity of 200 people,
in the detention camp there suddenly were placed about 700 people in the late autumn and in the winter.
Detention camp meant that these people were concentrated at that site
and were to be deported to concentration camps.
Thankfully, deportation from this camp was avoided because
the camp saw the break out of camp fever, and the camp was quarantined.
And almost entire staff of the camp contracted that disease.
The then administration had no strong interest in treating those people and resolving the situation,
so the disease persisted all winter until early spring.
How the camp authorities approached the detained persons, that is the Roma,
is suggested by the incident that happened in February.
They loaded the ill Roma on a truck and exported them to the area called Údolie (the Valley).
There a large pit was waiting for them, in which 26 people ended their lives.
Some were shot dead, some were beaten to death, others suffocated under the layers of clay.
The commanders of the detention camp resolved to treat the camp fever in such a brutal way.
In the post-war period, the mass grave was exhumed and in its place an improvised cemetery arose.
The cross was built there of a cannon barrel and now there's a little memorial Ma bisteren,
which commemorates the names of some of the victims.
The Germanes behaved badly.
We are also hiding in the village, I had a girl friend there, so I ran away.
Then I went back seeing them how they were doing it,
I thought they had left, and when I came back, they were still doing it.
So they did it to me as well.
We were not allowed to say a word "Silence!"
They would also have killed a person.
They were doing vice, raping. Women.
They were raping Gypsy women.
After the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising, many Roma communities were exterminated.
The pretext for the genocide was either assistance to partisans
or putative help to partisans, that is the accusation of such aid.
These communities were in many places eradicated from regional maps,
and the Roma never again returned in those places.
Run, Roma, down the hill,
so that the Gemans would not caught you.
When the Slovak National Uprising broke,
Roma were given the opportunity to report in the uprising Czechoslovak army,
which was used by quite a few of them.
After the suppression of the uprising, Slovakia was occupied by the German occupation army.
The fact that Roma settlements were situated on the edges of villages, on the edges of the forest,
allowed them the contact.
For example, people brought food in the settlement,
where the partisans came to collect it, that is they did not have to enter the village.
This was the cooperation
of the local population with the partisans via Roma.
And then it came, an indication that we should move out,
that the Germans were coming.
As much as we were able to, we took our daypacks and ran in the mountains.
We were staying in Balog,
but these Roma were already burning.
They have burned these Roma.
In one room they put them, even the children.
And from that side they started firing.
But one of them said this:
"You know what, folks, flee as fast as you so that they do not catch you,
because if they catch you, they will shoot you to death, and I'm going to set this on fire."
In early November 1944 the German soldiers dragged in Balog
a group of about 60 Roma and also partisans whom they had taken captives.
They put them in the local school.
The local population in cooperation with the then priest, Jozef Poláčko,
rescued many of these people in such a way that they
were bringing them food, and in doing so, they always managed to sneak some apparel
that German soldiers did not notice, that sometimes there were fewer people coming and more of them were leaving.
Thus they were able to save many people.
It is interesting that the local Roma provided assistance, too.
I was twelve years old, when there was war.
You know, I even cannot tell you what it was in me.
I do not know what it was in me.
Nobody dared, only I did dare to go.
I had a friend who used to live by us,
a white, so she told me,
"Why don´t you get some food to those Roma to eat, you know how these kids are hungry?"
The mom prepared some food.
But the father did not go, nor my sisters did , the older ones.
They were very much afraid to go.
They told me: "Go, let them shoot you, go, let them shoot you."
So the mom cooked something and I went and I brought it to them.
I brought it 5 times, and they did not catch me.
They caught me on the sixth time. The last time they caught me,
and when they were putting them in the rows, they pushed me in the row as well.
Well, but then the caretaker saw it, and his wife, and she screamed and cried,
"God, Ed's girl, they will get her away, they will get her away."
Then the caretaker phoned the priest.
He came and spoke German with him.
Then he the caretaker´s caught me and brought me home. She brought me in the house.
Then they drove them to Vydrovo, so they called that valley.
They brought them there, and there they shot them dead.
On 14th November 1944, they liquidated those people
in the way that they shot dead the men in the valley called Vydrovo.
And in the Jergovská valley, they brought out women and children who were taken to the hut and burned them there.
The next day of the local Roma had to bury these people
and found that not all of them were burnt down in the hut,
but they found some women outside who were raped before shooting.
The Roma were either killed on the spot
or taken to mass burial grounds in Turček or Nemecká.
It was like that in Ilja, in Lutila, and many other communities.
The Roma holocaust has one more symptom, and it is the unknown holocaust.
This is indeed the theme that has not been known for a long time.
After the war it was necessary to live the daily life
and those who have experienced the taste of injustice,
did not want to return to it.
Not even the collective sharing of this topic was sufficient.
This topic can serve as an example
that extreme solutions deliver extreme losses on both sides.
And it is always good to learn from something that had already been here,
that such rapid and radical solutions
that were here at the expense of a group of population, should never again be done.
Podtitulky: ŠVK Prešov - DICRK, OIT