Mária Horváthová

Mária Horváthová recalled her father’s pro­fes­sion – he was a wag­oner who trans­port­ed logs of wood and worked with hors­es all his life.

Mária Horváthová described how the moth­er of Jan Horváth[1] set out to see her son to a work camp eighty kilo­me­tres away and, because she had no food to give him, Mária’s moth­er and grand­moth­er gave a lot.

After the Ger­mans arrived [fol­low­ing the crush­ing of the Slo­vak Nation­al Upris­ing in 1944 (ed.)] Mária Horváthová’s fam­i­ly had to go away from Hunkovce and leave their prop­er­ty behind. The Ger­mans turned their large house into a hos­pi­tal. Horváthová described how fright­ened she was of the Ger­mans as a young child. The Horváths and about anoth­er thir­ty peo­ple hid in an emp­ty house that had belonged to some Jews in the vil­lage of Osla­va.[2]

One Ger­man came there at night, look­ing for some Roma girls, and when he couldn’t find any he set fire to the house with his cig­a­rette lighter. They all fled into the for­est and when morn­ing came they split up, and Horváthová with a few rela­tions reached some Roma they did not know in the vil­lage of Kuková. They stayed in a bor­rowed house for about six months, until the end of the war. They used to go and help the farm­ers, and dug pota­toes, and the women did their spin­ning and embroi­dery. Mária Horváthová‘s father had some mon­ey and so her grand­moth­er and moth­er had the idea to set out as far as the Hun­gar­i­an fron­tier to buy some tobac­co leaves. The local farm­ers would then exchange these for food­stuffs – pota­toes, milk, but­ter, curds. They had a small cart and a horse their father had caught; it would appear at that time stray hors­es could eas­i­ly be found. 

[1] Mária was not yet mar­ried to him.

[2] Not found.

Mária Horváthová‘s fam­i­ly saved up food and returned in the cart to their home in Hunkovce. She described the rav­aged, burnt-out land­scape with­out a sin­gle tree, rid­dled with craters and mines, hous­es that were shot-through and destroyed not only in Hunkovce but in the sur­round­ing vil­lages (Ladomirová, Poľan­ka, Komárnik). A few farm­ers’ fam­i­lies and three Roma fam­i­lies returned to their vil­lage. The men cleared the bod­ies of dead Russ­ian sol­diers and dug a pit to bury them in. They were paid for that with food – canned food, bacon, bread. Then the Roma built koli­by [huts, or sea­son­al shel­ters for shep­herds] with wood obtained from the mil­i­tary bunkers, and grad­u­al­ly bet­ter wood­en cot­tages. A month after their return to Hunkovce, Mária Horváthová gave birth to a daugh­ter Hele­na; in the end she had six chil­dren, all of them born at home. When they were ill her moth­er or aunt treat­ed them with herbs; and as Horváthová said, ​“an old Roma woman is bet­ter than any doctor”.