Koloman Pompa

Kolo­man Pom­pa’s father was a day-labourer.

Kolo­man Pom­pa enlist­ed in the army at the age of eigh­teen, but he had only been in the bar­racks for three months when he was sent to the vil­lage of Har­manec and from there to the front in Italy with oth­er Slo­vaks and Roma from the [labour] camps who, like Kolo­man Pom­pa, were reg­is­tered as being of Slo­vak nation­al­i­ty. The Roma reg­is­tered as being of Gyp­sy nation­al­i­ty were returned to the [labour] camps. Accord­ing to Pom­pa, at that time nation­al­i­ty was record­ed by notaries.

He was in Italy with his cousin from Toporec and a Roma from Lev­oča. He recalled an inci­dent in which he became sep­a­rat­ed from his own com­pa­ny. At that time they were march­ing thir­ty-five kilo­me­tres a day in a tem­per­a­ture of forty degrees with ruck­sacks, a rifle and full kit on their backs. When, at noon, they want­ed to eat, they had to get into water to pre­vent the ever-present mos­qui­toes from attack­ing them. Dur­ing one of these trans­fers he need­ed to relieve him­self dur­ing the night, so he went a short dis­tance away. All round it was com­plete­ly dark, as there was no munic­i­pal light­ing because of ene­my planes, and before he got back his group was gone. He reached an unnamed town, where he was afraid the Ger­mans would catch him and shoot him, think­ing him to be a par­ti­san. Even­tu­al­ly, an Ital­ian let him spend the night in his gra­nary. Some Ger­mans, who used to come there for petrol, also arrived that night, but did not notice Pom­pa and towards morn­ing left again on their motor­cy­cles. As he con­tin­ued his search for the com­pa­ny, he came to a town where the par­ti­sans had shot a Ger­man offi­cer. He saw with his own eyes the Ger­mans dri­ving out the civil­ians and shoot­ing more than thir­ty of them. Pom­pa took a cir­cuitous route to avoid falling into Ger­man hands. On the way, he was giv­en a lift by a Ger­man trans­port­ing ammu­ni­tion to the front, but Pom­pa asked to be dropped off after about six­ty kilo­me­tres under the pre­text of hav­ing arrived where he was going. He reached a vil­lage where he was tak­en in by an Ital­ian woman. He shared some cheese with her, but he was afraid she would cut his throat while he slept. At night, par­ti­sans came to the house and the woman opened the door. They attacked Pom­pa, want­i­ng to know where he had come from. When they found out he was a Slo­vak sol­dier, they gave him Amer­i­can cig­a­rettes and some­thing to eat and drink, and advised him on how he could get back to his own army. Pom­pa explained that although they were sub­or­di­nate to the Ger­mans, the Slo­vak Army was oper­at­ing else­where and had noth­ing to do with the Ger­mans. Just as he found his troops and was reunit­ed with his cousin, the Amer­i­cans launched an aer­i­al bom­bard­ment. Pom­pa nar­row­ly escaped the bul­lets that whizzed past his head. 

The sit­u­a­tion of his Slo­vak com­pa­ny changed after the par­ti­sans attacked the Ger­mans in Kež­marok, Slo­va­kia.[1] Accord­ing to Pom­pa, the Ger­mans no longer trust­ed the Slo­vaks; they were sus­pi­cious of them, and feared them. So they took away the sol­diers’ weapons, gave them shov­els and pick­ax­es instead, and sent them straight to the front to dig trench­es. But the Ital­ian par­ti­sans knew that the Slo­vak sol­diers were dig­ging the trench­es. Pom­pa did­n’t go over to the par­ti­sans because they were by the sea and he could not swim; more­over, when some­one switched sides, the Ger­mans start­ed to treat the sol­diers even worse. Pom­pa’s Slo­vak com­man­der dis­cour­aged them from escap­ing, say­ing that the Ger­mans would shoot them all.

While dig­ging trench­es in the moun­tains at Ver­rec­chie,[2] where the Ger­mans were guard­ing them with rifles, they were caught in an Amer­i­can bom­bard­ment. One Ger­man had his head blown off, then stag­gered around for a while with­out his head, and final­ly fell into a trench. Their field can­teen was also bombed by the Amer­i­cans, and the sol­diers then had to sub­sist just on bread made from the flour the peas­ants ground at home between stones from grain. The sol­diers’ cooks made bread out of it, and every­one got a quar­ter of a loaf for three days. They were bet­ter off when the Amer­i­cans came – they got bis­cuits or rice from them, and the can­teen was already func­tion­ing. The Ger­mans were cap­tured by the Amer­i­cans, and the Slo­vaks had to go through Amer­i­can train­ing; Pom­pa enu­mer­at­ed under­go­ing Ger­man train­ing, Amer­i­can train­ing, and then three months after the front, Czechoslo­vak train­ing. Then Jan Masaryk came to see them and they had to swear an oath that they had under­gone Czechoslo­vak train­ing. When they left Italy, the Ger­mans had to get the trans­port ready for them, and Kolo­man Pom­pa says that now the Ger­mans were under us, not us under them, and we could eas­i­ly have shot them.

On their arrival in Slo­va­kia, they came across many Rus­sians in the town of Malacky, who had their bed­ding spread out­side. The local peo­ple were very hap­py to see Slo­vak sol­diers, because they expect­ed them to pro­tect them from the Rus­sians. They told them how the Rus­sians raped women. After that the Rus­sians were more restrained.

Pom­pa remem­bered one Roma [Imrich Daško[3]] from Italy who was trans­ferred from his own divi­sion to Pompa’s as a pun­ish­ment – Pom­pa was in the tenth com­pa­ny, Daško in the sec­ond. He played the vio­lin and Pom­pa saw him most often in the com­pa­ny of anoth­er man, an excel­lent accor­dion play­er, who could play Ital­ian songs and whom the Ital­ians loved. Appar­ent­ly he was a teacher and half-Roma, and he taught Pom­pa to play the accor­dion. Pom­pa says that old Rinal­do, a vio­lin­ist,[4] was also in Italy with him.

Pom­pa also met Roma who came in wag­ons from Yugoslavia, who were rich, and whose wives were cov­ered with gold,[5] and who baked and ate hedge­hogs.[6]

Pom­pa passed through a num­ber of cities dur­ing his time in Italy, nam­ing Milan, Tri­este and Fer­rara. He also recalled the place where Mus­soli­ni and his mis­tress were hung upside down after the war.[7] He said he even had a pho­to­graph of them, as pho­tos were being hand­ed out to the sol­diers who went there to watch. But his chil­dren had stashed it away some­where, along with the notes on where he had been in Italy.

[1] He prob­a­bly means Ružomberok or Turčian­ský Svätý Mar­tin, where on 27 August 1944, two days before the offi­cial start of the Slo­vak Nation­al Upris­ing, Ružomberok was occu­pied by par­ti­sans and by Slo­vak sol­diers who had joined the upris­ing; in the attack they killed the Ger­man gar­ri­son and many mem­bers of the polit­i­cal par­ty of Slo­vak Ger­mans, the so-called Deutsche Partei; on 28 August 1944 they shot dead mem­bers of a Ger­man mil­i­tary mis­sion that was return­ing from Roma­nia through Slo­va­kia in the court­yard of the Mar­tin bar­racks; on 29 August 1944, the Ger­man army began to occu­py Slo­va­kia with the con­sent of Pres­i­dent Jozef Tiso and the gov­ern­ment of the Slo­vak Repub­lic, which, accord­ing to the head of the Wehrma­cht Oberkom­man­do, Field Mar­shal Wil­helm Kei­t­el, was no longer con­sid­ered an ally of Ger­many. (ed.)

[2] In the province of L’Aquila.

[3] See his rec­ol­lec­tion in the database.

[4] One of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the famous Rinal­do fam­i­ly of musi­cians from Bratisla­va. (ed.)

[5] The Olah Roma keep their wealth in gold because it is eas­i­ly portable and yet valu­able. (ed.)

[6] There are just a few groups of Roma who include hedge­hogs in their diet. (ed.)

[7] Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni and Clara Petac­ci were shot on 28 April 1945. Their bod­ies were tak­en to Azzo­nia and the fol­low­ing day hung upside down from the gird­er of a bombed-out petrol sta­tion in the Piaz­za­le Lore­to in Milan.