Michal Konček

Michal Konček was born in a set­tle­ment near the Slo­vak vil­lage of Nec­paly. About eight fam­i­lies lived there in wood­en cot­tages, most of them musi­cians, who did not live in actu­al pover­ty, but Konček remem­ber that some poor Roma used to beg from them. Michal Konček’s father was a musi­cian and his grand­fa­ther worked as a blacksmith. 

There were eleven chil­dren in the fam­i­ly, five boys and six girls; and all the boys became involved in music. Konček reached the eighth class at school before the war; his old­er sis­ter[1] grad­u­at­ed from the gym­na­si­um. Their moth­er[2] did not play any instru­ment, but she sang Roma and Slo­vak songs to them. Konček played the vio­lin from an ear­ly age, and after the war found­ed a fam­i­ly ensem­ble and for some time made his liv­ing as a musi­cian. Konček played the vio­lin from when he was four years old and at the age of six stood in for his broth­er[3] as the primáš in a children’s band which enter­tained the farm­ers. As a school­boy he had Thurs­day free, and so he used to go with his cousin[4] to per­form in Mar­tin – twelve kilo­me­tres away on foot. They had to have a per­mit from the may­or, but they earned a lot of mon­ey, he said: ten or twen­ty crowns. They gave the mon­ey to his moth­er so she could buy kerosene, salt and sugar.

[1] Name not given.

[2] Name not given.

[3] Name not given.

[4] Name not given.

In 1943 he enlist­ed in the army and served near Ban­ská Bystri­ca. The Roma from Nec­paly were at that time pro­tect­ed from being evict­ed from the vil­lage. Konček, how­ev­er, remem­bered the evic­tion of the Roma from the set­tle­ment of Bodor­ová[1] about eigh­teen kilo­me­tres away. The Roma there lived by a main road used by sup­port­ers of the Slo­vak state, and Konček had the impres­sion that the Roma used to go to that road to beg, which was why they were moved into the fields where they would not be visible.

The Roma from Nec­paly began at the same time to be tak­en off to labour camps.[2] They were sent to Hanušovce nad Topľou to build a rail­way track, among them his eldest broth­er and his youngest, the lat­ter still being under fif­teen years old. Konček stat­ed that all the Roma then returned home.

When the Slo­vak Nation­al Upris­ing broke out, Konček was serv­ing in a mil­i­tary band in Trna­va. Nev­er­the­less he was also giv­en a rifle and fought for two months; at the end of Octo­ber he was cap­tured by the Ger­mans and was in the camp in Dub­ni­ca nad Váhom until March. When the camp was dis­band­ed, they returned home on foot through the forests, which took them a week. He remem­bered that they were giv­en food in the vil­lages and when, on one occa­sion, the Ger­mans caught them, the farm­ers said they were locals, and noth­ing hap­pened to them.

Konček’s sis­ter got mar­ried in the vil­lage of Štubňa, where the Ger­mans had burnt down the Roma homes and sent the Roma to the camp in Dub­nice nad Váhom. After their return from the camp they there­fore had nowhere to go, and lived in the hous­es left behind by the Germans.

Michal Konček recalled that in Nec­paly dur­ing the war the Ger­mans killed two elder­ly Roma. The old man was deaf and did not under­stand what they were being ordered to do, and so they chopped off his head on a chop­ping block, and his wife’s too. 

[1] Konček said that the Roma from the set­tle­ment in Bodor­ová were evict­ed on the orders of Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or of the Slo­vak state, Gen­er­al [Fer­di­nand] Čat­loš. Accord­ing to Konček’s friend Jaroslav Cicko it was ordered by [Alexan­dr Šaňo] Mach, the com­man­der in chief of the Hlin­ka Guard and Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or of the Slo­vak state. In the opin­ion of the edi­tors it is more than prob­a­ble that the Roma were expelled from Bodor­ová to some­where out of sight on the orders of one of them imme­di­ate­ly after the 20 April 1941, when the gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion ​“mod­i­fy­ing some con­di­tions” for so-called Cikány. As the edi­tor recalls, most of the Roma set­tle­ments were not moved until 1943, when a new ordi­nance [of the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or on 21 July] crit­i­cised the non-com­pli­ance with the decree of 1941.

[2] It is not stat­ed when.

After the war Michal Konček found­ed a fam­i­ly ensem­ble which trav­elled to com­pe­ti­tions at which they won nation­al awards in Ostra­va and in Hradec Králové. As ear­ly as 1946 he was work­ing as a musi­cian by pro­fes­sion and per­formed until 1951. He mar­ried a Slo­vak woman from Ružomberok whose uncle was Andrej Hlin­ka. It was because of their wives that he and the oth­er mem­bers of the ensem­ble stopped per­form­ing. Konček returned to Nec­paly and under the new Com­mu­nist régime had to begin to make a liv­ing by man­u­al labour – he was employed for five years in a stone quar­ry and then as a labour­er with the foresters. He grad­u­at­ed from forestry school and then worked as a game­keep­er, but con­tin­ued to per­form music from time to time. His first wife died, and at the time the inter­view was record­ed he was liv­ing with his sec­ond wife[1] whom he had met before mil­i­tary ser­vice and whom he met again after she had been wid­owed. Michal Konček briefly recalled [Anton] Facu­na, who attend­ed the gym­na­si­um with his old­er sis­ter. He says he was a great friend and that he also played the fiddle. 

[1] Name not given.