Jolanka Kurejová

From around the age of thir­teen Jolan­ka Kure­jová worked for sev­er­al Jew­ish fam­i­lies – she cleaned, washed the floors, fetched water, car­ried wood and plucked geese for the Jews, who then pre­pared it to be kosher. On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the Sab­bath, she went to light the fire and bring their meals from the bak­ery. She walked bare­foot from the set­tle­ment to the town where they lived. Jolan­ka grew up with her two sis­ters and one broth­er. She does not remem­ber her father, but gave all the mon­ey she earned to her moth­er to sup­port her­self. Only the Roma worked for the Jews – the girls and women as maids and ser­vants, the men as porters: Jews were usu­al­ly shop­keep­ers and need­ed some­one to car­ry their bags and suit­cas­es of goods. The heavy goods used to be brought to the Jews by the Roma chief who was rich, and had a horse and cart. There was a syn­a­gogue in Humen­né before the war, but after­wards it was demolished.

[In 1942] the Hlin­ka Guard round­ed up the local Jews, herd­ed them into cat­tle cars and took them away – sep­a­rat­ing them into women, men, lit­tle girls, and lit­tle boys – Jolan­ka Kure­jová called the lat­ter ​“bucheri­ci” [prob­a­bly from the Yid­dish word bocher for boy]. The Roma fol­lowed them to the sta­tion and cried for them. They left a lot of gold and fur­ni­ture behind: every­thing they had saved was tak­en by mem­bers of the Hlin­ka Guard. Jolan­ka Kure­jová men­tions a fam­i­ly called Andij, whose three sons had joined the Hlin­ka Guard and then brought home in trucks all that remained of the Jew­ish house­holds. Jolan­ka her­self was giv­en clothes and shoes by the Andij fam­i­ly, so she did not have to go bare­foot.[1]

Jolan­ka Kure­jová lost her work when the Jew­ish fam­i­lies were deport­ed – she went round the vil­lages sell­ing wood, but was paid in pota­toes – only the Jews paid the Roma in cash.

Of the local Jews, only the fam­i­ly of a dairy farmer at Pod­skalka was saved, hav­ing been hid­den by Jolanka’s aunt Sokač­ka. They lived in her shack in the Roma set­tle­ment till the end of the war, and then left for Pales­tine. Jolan­ka Kure­jová said that more Jews were hid­den in the set­tle­ment, but it was the dairy farmer she remem­bers. Even though the Hlin­ka Guard used to come to the set­tle­ment, none of the Roma betrayed them. Kure­jová described how in win­ter, when it was freez­ing, the Guard pulled men from their beds, beat them and then took them to the labour camp, but they didn’t find the dairy farmer’s family.

It was the rich Roma chief who chose which Roma were sent to the camp. At that time the Hlin­ka Guard came to the set­tle­ment and beat him because the Roma were steal­ing pota­toes from the fields out of hunger. Jolan­ka Kurejová’s broth­er and future broth­er-in-law were tak­en with the oth­er men to the Petič camp in Hanušovce at that time. They had to work hard there, and went hun­gry, and they were often beat­en. Jolanka’s broth­er escaped and slept in the for­est, but when he came home one day, the Hlin­ka Guard broke in, beat him in front of the fam­i­ly and took him back to the camp. He escaped again and hid in the for­est and this time they didn’t catch him. Lat­er the rest of the fam­i­ly fled into the for­est as well, where they built huts in which they lived.

[1] Only a few Jew­ish fam­i­lies from Humen­né and Pod­skalka man­aged to move legal­ly to Pales­tine in 1940; the remain­ing Jews were deport­ed to Auschwitz in 1942. (ed.)

In the sum­mer of 1947 the set­tle­ment in Pod­skalka was attacked by Ban­derites. The Roma were sleep­ing out­side because they had fall­en asleep after gath­er­ing chamomile which they then car­ried to the col­lec­tion cen­tre; they received a hun­dred and ten crowns a kilo in the old cur­ren­cy. Jolan­ka Kurejová’s first-born son Milan, just a few months old, was with her. She described being wok­en up by her husband’s shout that the Ger­mans were there and were mur­der­ing the Roma, but was imme­di­ate­ly cor­rect­ed by Aladár Kurej: ​“Those weren’t Ger­mans, those were Ukraini­ans, don’t you under­stand! Insur­gents!“ Jolan­ka replied to that: ​“Well, no mat­ter whether they were Ger­man Ukraini­ans or Ukrain­ian Ger­mans, they still want­ed to mur­der us and so they were like Ger­mans!” She described how she jumped up just as she was, in her slip, grabbed her son in a quilt and fled with the oth­ers round the ceme­tery to the vil­lage of Hažín. In the con­fu­sion her son fell from her arms and rolled down the hill. She ran after him and was stopped by the par­ti­sans. Anoth­er Roma woman explained to them what was hap­pen­ing and the par­ti­sans then shone a light in the child’s eyes to see if he was still alive. When anoth­er Roma woman dropped her daugh­ter, in her pan­ic she left her there and oth­er Roma picked her up. The par­ti­sans then took them away to Hažín and hid them in a sta­ble. The Roma who remained in Pod­skalka were beat­en and shot at. Jolanka’s broth­er was also wound­ed. [Aladár Kurej added that sev­en Roma were wound­ed. They car­ried one of them on their backs, but were stopped by Slo­vak sol­diers. With anoth­er Roma called Dand­va­lo, they took him into the city to iden­ti­fy the insur­gents. He recog­nised some of them but did not know what hap­pened to them.][1]

Jolan­ka Kurejová’s son Milan died of pneu­mo­nia the fol­low­ing win­ter when he was a year old. His younger broth­er, also called Milan, was born in 1951.

[In the 1950s the Kure­js moved to the Czech Repub­lic and for sev­er­al years lived in Český Krumlov and in České Budějovice. Lat­er, with their only son, they returned to Pod­skalka in Slo­va­kia, and then lived in Humen­né. Jolan­ka Kure­jová spent almost thir­ty years work­ing in the local chem­i­cal plant, Aladár Kurej was a shep­herd in Pod­skalka. Dur­ing his retire­ment he began, self-taught, to cre­ate col­lages – land­scape oil paint­ings com­bined with black and white pho­tographs of Roma. At the time of the inter­view he was already seri­ous­ly ill. (ed.)]

[1] The raid by Ukrain­ian insur­gents on Pod­skalka and oth­er local­i­ties in Slo­va­kia in 1947 is doc­u­ment­ed in a col­lec­tion of archive doc­u­ments: UPA vo sve­tle sloven­ských a českých doku­men­tov (1945 – 1948) (The UPA in the light of Slo­vak and Czech docuents [1945 – 1948]), Book 2: ​“Rejd UРA do západ­nej Európy (1947): českosloven­ská ces­ta. Letopis ukra­jinskej povstaleck­ej armády” (The UPA raid into west­ern Europe [1947]: the Czechoslo­vak route. Chron­i­cle of the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army), Part 53. Litopys UPA, Toron­to – Lvov 2017, acces­si­ble online: https://​dias​po​ri​ana​.org​.ua/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​b​o​o​k​s​/​1​4​9​4​2​/​f​i​l​e.pdf , cit. 8. 8. 2021