Ján Bartoška

Ján Bar­toš­ka learned about the labour camps in Slo­va­kia and the con­di­tions that pre­vailed there main­ly from eye­wit­ness­es who had man­aged to escape. There were labour camps in both East­ern and Cen­tral Slo­va­kia, but the inhab­i­tants of Cen­tral Slo­va­kia were delib­er­ate­ly trans­port­ed as far east as pos­si­ble in order to make it dif­fi­cult for them to escape. For exam­ple, some­one could be put into a labour camp because he had resist­ed a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the local Hlin­ka Guard. Bar­toš­ka cites as an exam­ple the busi­ness­man and Guard mem­ber Ľup­ták from [Ban­ská] Bystri­ca who built rail­way cross­ings.[1] Pris­on­ers in the [labour] camps could be killed with impuni­ty. If some­one was shot or died of ill­ness, he was list­ed as hav­ing been shot while try­ing to escape which was con­sid­ered valid grounds for shooting.

Ján Bar­tos­ka described a sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the war when his moth­er, sis­ter and sis­ter-in-law were in a group talk­ing togeth­er. They were approached by a police­man named Bed­nárik,[2] who want­ed to catch them and shave their heads. Bartoška’s moth­er man­aged to escape when Bar­toš­ka pushed Bed­nárik away, and then he escaped him­self, although Bed­nárik fired into the air. From then on, the police­man was look­ing for him, and Bar­toš­ka had to stay in hid­ing for some time. Par­ti­sans used to come down from the forests among the peo­ple and Bar­toš­ka was approached by a Russ­ian who asked if he would like to join them. He agreed and joined Cap­tain [Ernest] Bielik’s Jánošík par­ti­san brigade, where he spent eight months. At first there were sev­en­teen of them, but lat­er they formed two reg­i­ments. There were more Roma among the par­ti­sans, espe­cial­ly those who were a long way from home or who had lost their fam­i­lies in the war; these, in Bartoška’s opin­ion, were look­ing for death.

The Jánošík Brigade oper­at­ed over a wide ter­ri­to­ry. Bar­toš­ka men­tioned the vil­lages of Brezno (where they had their head­quar­ters), Tel­gárt, Vernár, Hra­novni­ca, Hel­pa, Lip­tov, Ružomberok, and Strážske. They spent a long time in Horehronie, where they fought at the front. They were involved in the fight­ing, but Bar­toš­ka says they did not plun­der. He says that the rela­tions in the brigade were on an equal foot­ing, and that they had good rela­tions with the Russ­ian commanders.

When the par­ti­sans were prepar­ing an attack, or when, for exam­ple, a train had to be blown up, Bar­toš­ka car­ried explo­sives in a back­pack, usu­al­ly 15 to 20 kilo­grams, so it would not be too heavy and he could run or crawl. When nec­es­sary, he had to ford the Hron or Váh rivers in winter.

Bar­tos­ka was often sent with a group of up to five men to find food. Because he was Roma and the Roma often lived near the for­est on the edge of the vil­lage, he was sent to them on recon­nais­sance mis­sions to find out where the Ger­mans were.

Jan Bar­toš­ka lost six mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, who were lat­er iden­ti­fied in a mass grave in the vil­lage of Krem­nič­ka. The Gestapo first cap­tured his two sis­ters and his broth­er-in-law. When three oth­er rel­a­tives learned where they were, they went to ask for their release, but they too nev­er returned. They were then found shot dead in a grave in which were buried 350 to 400 Roma who had come from the vil­lages of Krem­nič­ka, Krem­ni­ca, Hron­ský Kríž,[3] Ban­ská Šti­avni­ca and the sur­round­ing area. 

He then worked in Krem­nič­ka to uncov­er a mass grave in a lime pit. He was able to read and write, so he used to issue the pay slips to the peo­ple who worked there. He saw what it looked like and what ter­ri­ble deaths peo­ple died there.

[1] Prob­a­bly Andrej Ľup­ták, the dis­trict com­man­der of the Hlin­ka Guard from the adja­cent dis­trict of Brezno nad Hronom.

[2] First name not given.

[3] Svätý Kríž, today’s Žiar nad Hronom.