Jozefína Danielová

Before 1930, the Roma lived out­side the vil­lage in a Roma set­tle­ment of about five or six hous­es by the for­est. They had a hard life then, and were under­fed. When they were young, Joze­fí­na Daniel’s par­ents went to work in the fields of large estates, and were part­ly paid in kind. They would car­ry their chil­dren with them on their backs. They also worked on build­ing sites, wher­ev­er work could be found, but most­ly only in the sum­mer. They did receive mon­ey for their work in addi­tion to food, but they were not paid enough. The local Roma men were black­smiths; Joze­fí­na Danielová remem­bers two of them. The women would go to beg from the Slo­vak peas­ants, and in the sum­mer they would go to work again for a while. Dur­ing Joze­fí­na Danielová’s life­time, the Roma were able to move clos­er to the Slo­vaks, buy land in one street, and build new hous­ing there. She remem­bers that the Roma invit­ed the rich Slo­vak peas­ants with whom they worked in the sum­mer to be god­par­ents to their chil­dren; her god­par­ents were Slo­vaks too, and they had friend­ly rela­tions with her parents.

Accord­ing to her, the Romani peo­ple were very close-knit then; they were poor, but life was hap­pi­er. They cel­e­brat­ed hol­i­days togeth­er, and vis­it­ed each other.

Joze­fí­na Danielová’s father was work­ing, he did not wor­ry about any­thing, and the Hlin­ka Guard from Čáry left them alone. They did noth­ing bad to them or to the oth­er Roma in the vil­lage. In the places where the Ger­mans were at that time, it was­n’t good, she said, but the Ger­mans weren’t in Čáry for long, so the Hlin­ka Guard on their own did­n’t harm them. How­ev­er, the Roma had lim­it­ed rights — they could not, for exam­ple, go to the pub or to enter­tain­ment; if they want­ed to enjoy music, they had to make their own enter­tain­ment at home, she recalled, adding: ​“You could be dressed like a gen­tle­man, you could be any­thing, but they still would­n’t let you in.”

The Ger­mans moved into Čáry only in the win­ter;[1] they were sol­diers wound­ed in the bomb­ing, and then they were tak­en some­where else again. The Rus­sians, accord­ing to her, were worse – they drove them out of the house as soon as they arrived, they had no chance to take any­thing with them, not even food, and the Rus­sians set up a radio sta­tion there. They went after the women, raped young girls, and so the Roma women had to hide in the fields day and night. The high­er ranks usu­al­ly behaved better.

Roma from Čáry served in the mil­i­tary; in the Slo­vak army they were assigned to labour gangs.

[1] Year not given.

Danielová recalled that when she was grown up and mar­ried, the old Roma would come in the evening, tell sto­ries, dance, sing and be mer­ry. Lat­er, they began to live more for them­selves and spend their evenings at home in front of the television.