Ladislav Petík

Ladislav Petík was an active sol­dier in the [Slo­vak] Army in Trna­va. After the out­break of the Slo­vak Nation­al Upris­ing he joined the par­ti­sans, among whom were many Roma. He was with the par­ti­sans in the forests for a whole month. Because of the lack of food, they shot mil­i­tary hors­es and roast­ed them on a spit. They melt­ed snow to get water to drink. They reached the town of Ban­ská Bystri­ca and the vil­lage of Staré Hory, and made it as far as [Mount] Ďumbier, and [the peak of Mount] Prašivá, where they were cap­tured. Many Roma were killed in the fighting.

The pris­on­ers were tak­en by the Ger­mans to Ger­many; Petík named Ravens­brück and Sach­sen­hausen. The pris­on­ers had to undress, after which their clothes and gold were tak­en away and they were herd­ed into a steam room for cleans­ing. Then they were giv­en clothes and were divid­ed into bar­racks and work teams. There were about a hun­dred pris­on­ers in one room. Petík relat­ed that it was a long room with three-deck­er bunk beds; he slept in the top one. The pris­on­ers were lying on bare boards cov­ered with blan­kets; there was no heat­ing in the bar­racks and they were cold.

They worked from six in the morn­ing until noon and then again until six in the evening. After return­ing from work, the pris­on­ers were con­fined to their bunks. Petík recalled how hunger forced them to go to the kitchen to steal raw pota­to peel­ings. When a pris­on­er was caught, he received twen­ty-five lash­es. In the morn­ing the pris­on­ers were giv­en ten slices of bread and tea or black cof­fee with­out sug­ar. At noon, they had beet soup and a few pota­toes. In the evening it was soup, pota­toes or rice gru­el again. Petík tells us how much weight he lost in the camp. Before his cap­ture he weighed eighty kilos, but only six­ty after three months in the camp.[1]

There were many Roma from Slo­va­kia in the con­cen­tra­tion camp.[2] He specif­i­cal­ly recalled an elder­ly man with two sons who came from the same region as Petík. All three were shot because they tried to escape. There were pris­on­ers of var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties in the camp, includ­ing Czechs. Petík men­tions the pris­on­ers who informed on the oth­ers to the Ger­mans. Ger­man was the most com­mon lan­guage spo­ken in the camp; accord­ing to Petík, they were not allowed to speak Romani, and if they had they would have been gassed. Every­body was afraid, so the Romani peo­ple told sto­ries in Slo­vak.[3] He men­tioned the Slo­vaks as well, old­er men who also knew how to tell beau­ti­ful tales.

Petík recalled an eigh­teen-year-old Slo­vak from Bratisla­va who joined the Ger­mans. This SS man, as Petík called him, kept watch over them – he was like a prison warder in the camp and Petík went to his guard­house every night to heat it for him. One day the warder asked him to get hold of some cig­a­rettes, so Petík went to his Ger­man kapo, impris­oned for hav­ing been a Com­mu­nist, and brought the warder a few cig­a­rettes. The warder told him that the Rus­sians were in Bratisla­va already.[4] Petík passed the infor­ma­tion on to anoth­er pris­on­er and soon every­one knew.

About two weeks before the Rus­sians began to take Berlin, Petík was evac­u­at­ed togeth­er with oth­er pris­on­ers. They were herd­ed west­ward, the Rus­sians watch­ing them from planes, but not bomb­ing them. Petík recalled that they were won­der­ing all the time whether they would stay alive.

He went with oth­er men from east­ern Slo­va­kia – an old Slo­vak named Haluš­ka from the vil­lage of Čirč [Stará Ľubovňa dis­trict], a Roma from Hanušovce [nad Topľou] and a Roma musi­cian. It was cold in April, so they broke some twigs in the for­est and made a fire. The Ger­mans who accom­pa­nied them gave them match­es, and then they warmed them­selves by the fire with them. Petík recalls that they had noth­ing to eat or drink on the way, so when they came to a stream or well, they drew water and made tea from herbs. The jour­ney last­ed about two weeks, and the food – a one-pound pack­age con­tain­ing bis­cuits and con­densed milk — last­ed only one day.

[1] It is not men­tioned which camp.

[2] These were Roma who, like Ladislav Petík, were cap­tured dur­ing the sup­pres­sion of the Slo­vak Nation­al Upris­ing. (ed.)

[3] A folk­lore tra­di­tion in Romani com­mu­ni­ties that was an extreme­ly pop­u­lar yet dig­ni­fied cul­tur­al activ­i­ty until about the begin­ning of the 1980s. (ed.)

[4] Bratisla­va was occu­pied by the troops of the 2^nd Ukrain­ian Front on April 4, 1945. (ed.)

After the lib­er­a­tion, the first thing Petik tried to get was food. They jumped onto cars or wag­ons and stole food. Petík took a jug of hon­ey from a Pol­ish man’s car. He report­ed that the Jews, who got out of the camps after years of star­va­tion, threw them­selves on every­thing greasy and fat­ty and caught jaun­dice from it, he believed, and died. Petik and the men in his group there­fore first ate a spoon­ful of hon­ey before each meal, as they had been advised by one of their num­ber who had expe­ri­ence of World War I in Rus­sia. By then there were only four of them and no one to watch them.

On the way they saw a horse-drawn wag­on with a Ger­man and his wife on it. They went home with them. The Ger­man gave them some food for the hors­es and then they left with the wag­on. They arrived at a town,[1] where there were Amer­i­cans and among them a Czech cap­tain, who gave them anoth­er horse to pair up with. After a time they were stopped on the road by the Amer­i­cans and learned from a Pole that they were head­ing in the direc­tion of France instead of home. They spent the night in a vil­lage [name not giv­en], where a French woman gave them milk and eggs, and in the morn­ing they start­ed back the same way. They arrived at ​“Pren­zlav” [not found; appar­ent­ly this was not Pren­zlau], where the Rus­sians were already, who took their hors­es and drove them to the town in a car. There were about two thou­sand Czechoslo­vaks con­cen­trat­ed in the bar­racks there, and they cooked Czech food for them. After a cou­ple of weeks they were well-fed and sent home. Petík recalled that he got so fat there that they could­n’t rec­og­nize him at home.

[1] Name not given.