Mr. Fedák

Fedák said that in 1939 he took part in mil­i­tary exer­cis­es, dur­ing mobi­liza­tion; two months lat­er he was sent to Prachat­ice because the bor­der­lands were being hand­ed over.[1] After his return, he stayed at home for a month and was again con­script­ed into the so-called cof­fee army, which was only for Roma. Then he was in the camp in Bystré, where they were build­ing a bridge on the Prešov-Strážske rail­way, then under con­struc­tion. He was tak­en straight from his home by the Hlin­ka Guards, who hat­ed the Roma — Fedák said that ​“for them, gyp­sy or toe-rag, what’s the dif­fer­ence?”. They would take any­one who was unem­ployed, only that at that time nobody would employ Roma. Accord­ing to Fedák, who­ev­er want­ed to get a job first had to buy fifty or a hun­dred eggs or a nice goose or hen and slip them to a Slo­vak, and only then might he be employed. When some­thing was being built some­where, eighty or a hun­dred would come look­ing for work, but the builder chose only five or ten. In places where there were forests, the trees were felled by the cubic metre. For three or four metres of cut tim­ber three peo­ple earned eight or twelve crowns between them.

Fedák spent a year in a labour camp where main­ly Roma were interned; the Slo­vaks held at Bystré were those opposed to the Hlin­ka Guard. There were only men in the camp; Fedák saw Romani women in anoth­er camp. There were about thir­ty-five Roma from Hrabovec, only four of whom returned. Fedák’s three broth­ers-in-law were there as well. They worked twelve hours a day, and ate what they found in the fields – the tops of beets, and stolen pota­toes cooked on small stoves in the bar­racks. When the rail­way was fin­ished, they let those who had behaved well could go home. Fedák returned home with his brothers-in-law.

When the mobi­liza­tion against the [Slo­vak nation­al] upris­ing took place, Fedák was involved in the cam­paign against the par­ti­sans. At that time, the Slo­vaks were afraid of the par­ti­sans and made up all sorts of sto­ries about them, for exam­ple, that they gouged out eyes, cut people’s tongues off, or cut them open, filled them with stones, and sewed them up again. Fedák once came across a Russ­ian par­ti­san in the for­est who was dec­o­rat­ed with medals and had an auto­mat­ic; he him­self had only a rifle. He was afraid, but he had to go with him to the foot of Mount Ďumbier, where the par­ti­sans had a post. There were about a hun­dred and fifty of them there, wash­ing and shav­ing, with an accor­dion play­ing. He was giv­en food and a cig­a­rette. At night, the Rus­sians fired coloured rock­et sig­nals to let the oth­er par­ti­sans know where they were. Fedák was afraid the sol­diers would catch them and regret­ted he had gone through the for­est rather than along the stream. He said that a cer­tain Cha­payev[2] rode up on horse­back, bring­ing about fifty men with him from the Pol­ish front, say­ing there was not to be a sin­gle Slo­vak sol­dier among the par­ti­sans because there had been some kind of betray­al. How­ev­er, a Slo­vak from the town of Ružomberok, Jozef Kor­mand, who was an admin­is­tra­tor and under­stood finance, came there. He joined the par­ti­sans and formed a legion sole­ly of Slo­vak sol­diers, which he com­mand­ed; Fedák joined his group. At Ban­ská Bystri­ca they were out­num­bered by the Ger­mans and the par­ti­sans dis­persed. Fedák and oth­ers hid in the ravines near Svätý Kríž, where the Ger­mans sur­round­ed them and found them. The pris­on­ers had to spend two days and a night with­out food walk­ing to Budapest. When they passed through the vil­lages that some of the pris­on­ers came from, the local guards­men ​“reclaimed” about five hun­dred of them. Fedák was from the east and nobody knew him, so he had to con­tin­ue. His wife had no idea what was hap­pen­ing to her hus­band – she thought he had gone to Rus­sia, or was with the par­ti­sans, had been cap­tured, or was dead.

Fedák end­ed up in the Mau­thausen con­cen­tra­tion camp. In his words, ​“they were round­ing up Jews, not Gyp­sies, but in the end they round­ed up the Roma too.” If some­one was light-skinned, they could still get away with it with the Ger­mans, but with those who were dark-skinned stood no chance. They had to dig wide trench­es about thir­ty metres deep against the tanks. They worked fif­teen hours a day, return­ing at eight in the evening. They were told that if any of them dared to escape, every fifth pris­on­er would be shot. They were giv­en one piece of bread to last for three days. They had to walk past the kitchen to get to the toi­let, so some­times they would pick up dis­card­ed scraps and hide them in their pock­ets and under their shirts – pota­to peel­ings, bread, bones or var­i­ous rem­anants, and they would then cook them in the bar­racks. On their way to work they also col­lect­ed dan­de­lions to cook.

[1] The demo­bi­liza­tion, begun after the Munich Agree­ment, was com­plet­ed in Decem­ber 1938, and the state of mil­i­tary emer­gency end­ed on 28 Feb­ru­ary 1939.

[2] He prob­a­bly means some­one from the Cha­payev par­ti­san detach­ment, named after the leg­endary Russ­ian sol­dier Vasi­ly Ivanovich Chapayev.