Ján Cibula

There were many Roma liv­ing in Klen­ovec. They occu­pied around forty hous­es and most of them made a liv­ing as musi­cians. In the past they had come to the vil­lage as the court musi­cians of the local counts Kubinyi. Only a few Roma fam­i­lies worked in the bas­ket trade or pro­duced brush­es and brooms. Ján Cibula’s father was sim­i­lar­ly a musi­cian, a primáš. Cibu­la was one of the few Roma chil­dren to attend pri­ma­ry school con­sis­tent­ly and he planned to con­tin­ue his studies.

Ján Cibu­la describes the restric­tions that affect­ed the Roma due to the war, and the threats from the Ger­mans. At the time he was fin­ish­ing pri­ma­ry school, Roma were no longer allowed to study at gym­na­si­um but after his father inter­vened with the head teacher of the gym­na­si­um in Tisovec he was accept­ed. He attend­ed for a year or two, then the fight­ing start­ed and he had to stay at home. Cibu­la described how the farm­ers in the vil­lage were angry with the Roma. Then the Ger­mans came and when they were prepar­ing to destroy the local Roma set­tle­ment,[1] the farm­ers made fun of the Roma. How­ev­er, Russ­ian par­ti­sans accom­pa­nied by Ján Cibula’s uncle Tomáš Farkaš threw the Ger­mans out of the set­tle­ment and the Roma were saved.

[1] No clos­er date or peri­od is given.

Ján Cibu­la con­tin­ued his stud­ies, and at the age of four­teen began to be involved with the Roma cause. On 1 May 1946, on his insti­ga­tion, the local Roma came to the vil­lage with a ban­ner say­ing ​“Awake, Roma” and Cibu­la gave a speech in the vil­lage square. He remind­ed them how dur­ing the war the Ger­mans, who did not respect them, want­ed to mur­der them. The Roma then believed that things would improve and just want­ed the farm­ers from the vil­lage to respect them more.

After grad­u­at­ing from the gym­na­si­um in Rimavská Sob­o­ta in 1951 he con­tin­ued his stud­ies in med­i­cine in Bratisla­va. His sib­lings also devot­ed them­selves to study – his younger sis­ter Adéla became a doc­tor, his broth­er Bar­na an engi­neer, and his sis­ter Žala attend­ed uni­ver­si­ty in Košice,[1] but after Ján Cibu­la emi­grat­ed, she was expelled.[2] Cibu­la emi­grat­ed because of his wife, who had tak­en their two chil­dren and left with anoth­er man for Ger­many; Cibu­la lat­er set­tled in Bern. He recalled how in Bratisla­va, as a doc­tor, when his sis­ter Adéla, a med­ical stu­dent, was uncer­tain of a diag­no­sis, he advised her in the Roma lan­guage. How­ev­er, when the patients asked what lan­guage he was speak­ing he told them it was Latin, because he was ashamed to be speak­ing Romani. He recalled help­ing to found the Asso­ci­a­tion of Gyp­sies-Roma and his coop­er­a­tion with Anton Facu­na. He was then work­ing in Bern as a doc­tor by day and at night he sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly devot­ed him­self to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty on behalf of the Roma.

[1] Field not given.

[2] This was how the Com­mu­nist admin­is­tra­tion pun­ished the rel­a­tives of those who emi­grat­ed to west­ern Europe.