Jozef Synů

Jozef Synů cur­so­ri­ly described his life as an orphan before the war. He didn’t know his father at all, and after the death of his moth­er his old­er sib­lings looked after him as the youngest of eigh­teen chil­dren. He described his hunger and how he wan­dered from vil­lage to village.

He recalled how when he was about sev­en­teen or eigh­teen, he was tak­en from his native set­tle­ment in the night, togeth­er with oth­er Roma men, by mem­bers of the Hlin­ka Guard to a camp in Hanušovce nad Topľou. He remem­bers the bad san­i­ta­tion, the ever-present lice and bed­bugs, the inad­e­quate cloth­ing, the hard work, the beat­ings with sticks, his hunger, and steal­ing crops from the fields even at the cost of phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment if he was betrayed. Synů described how he had no trousers and went around naked with a blan­ket wrapped round him. In the camp they exchanged cloth­ing for food, as the fam­i­lies of Roma who worked well and were from the local­i­ty were allowed to bring them food, and those with no one to improve their lot exchanged their top gar­ments for some­thing to eat. The camp was meant to be pure­ly Roma.[1] Jozef Synů escaped twice from the camp, once on the advice of a Roma chief,[2] who assured him that they would not do any­thing to him because he had reached the age when he could be con­script­ed [and thus with a view to his youth was employ­able as a sol­dier]. Once Synů and a Roma youth escaped togeth­er and worked secret­ly for farm­ers in Čer­veni­ca, help­ing them to cut the hay. Synů described one non-Roma farmer as decent because he did not report them to the author­i­ties. He was how­ev­er con­script­ed again for mil­i­tary ser­vice and placed in a camp,[3] where he spent a year and a half. Synů was lat­er deployed to bury the dead bod­ies of sol­diers, for which they were well paid.[4]

[1] It was a forced labour camp for ​“gyp­sies and oth­er anti-socials ele­ments” where they were mixed, but the Roma were accom­mo­dat­ed sep­a­rate­ly and prob­a­bly some work teams were pure­ly ​“gyp­sy”. (ed.)

[2] It emerges from the con­text that he was refer­ring to the Roma kapo in the camp, not the Roma chief who was the medi­a­tor between the local major­i­ty and the Roma in a giv­en set­tle­ment or vil­lage. (ed.)

[3] Mean­ing a mil­i­tary unit for gyp­sies. (ed.)

[4] The tes­ti­mo­ny refers to the time when the front line crossed the region; oth­er wit­ness­es also tes­ti­fy that con­scripts, chiefly Roma, cleared away the fall­en; the farm­ers to whom this order like­wise applied often hired the Roma to do the job for them. (ed.)

Jozef Synů briefly men­tioned an act of revenge – after the Lib­er­a­tion, some Roma who had been interned dur­ing the war killed a Roma, prob­a­bly a Roma kapo who had injured them in the camp. Synů also sup­ple­ment­ed the rec­ol­lec­tions of Mrs Slepčíková, who was present, with a sen­tence about how trai­tors were hanged in the square in Košice – she her­self did not know who by, pos­si­bly the Russians.