Šándor Mirga

Šán­dor Mirga’s father was a black­smith, and as a young boy Šán­dor Mir­ga used to help him, hand­ing him the iron and blow­ing the bellows.

Šán­dor Mir­ga’s old­er broth­er (b. 1921) enlist­ed when he said Hitler start­ed round­ing up peo­ple. Lat­er he escaped from the Ger­mans to the Rus­sians, and after three years he joined the US Army. He did­n’t return home until two years after lib­er­a­tion, wear­ing an Amer­i­can uni­form and with many decorations.

Šán­dor Mir­ga’s father enlist­ed in 1941 and after return­ing from the front, he sup­port­ed the par­ti­sans, going with them to wealthy peas­ants and con­fis­cat­ing their food – meat, flour, pota­toes. Then the Gestapo came for his father and took him to their head­quar­ters, where they beat him. The parish priest from Spišská Stará Ves vouched for him, so they did­n’t send him to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. His father stayed at home for three days, then joined the par­ti­sans and did not return until 1945.

When the Ger­mans came, Šán­dor Mir­ga was small and does­n’t remem­ber much, but he said that some of them were not wicked; they helped the Roma and they even brought them meat.

In the neigh­bour­ing vil­lage of Lech­ni­ca, where no Roma lived, there were many par­ti­sans, so the mem­bers of the Hlin­ka Guard burned it down. They herd­ed the inhab­i­tants into a barn and set it on fire.

When Šán­dor Mirga’s father returned home, the vil­lagers hat­ed him. The for­mer mem­bers of the Hlin­ka Guard knew that he had been work­ing with the par­ti­sans, and the peas­ants could not for­get that he had con­fis­cat­ed their food. Every night they wait­ed for his father and want­ed to kill him, so the fam­i­ly decid­ed to go to Horní Planá in Šuma­va. At that time, there were still Sude­ten Ger­mans liv­ing there who spoke Czech, were very kind, and brought food to the Mir­gas. When the Czechs drove them out of the Sude­ten­land, one of them told the Mir­gas to take his pos­ses­sions – gold, sil­ver, every­thing he could­n’t take with him. But Šán­dor Mir­ga’s father hand­ed it over to the Nation­al Com­mit­tee, as by that time he was already a big communist.

In 1955, Šán­dor Mir­ga’s broth­er, who had not returned home until 1947, was found lying dead on the road. When the police arrived from Prague and per­formed an autop­sy, they did not tell the fam­i­ly the cause of death. How­ev­er, one of the police­men sug­gest­ed that the broth­er may have been annoy­ing some­one, which is why Šán­dor Mir­ga believes he was mur­dered. At the time, he him­self had already returned from the army, and, as his broth­er had left five chil­dren, he per­suad­ed his par­ents to take them in. 

Šán­dor Mir­ga’s broth­er’s wid­ow, who was his wife’s sis­ter, now lived with a man named Koky.

Mir­ga’s moth­er was pious and want­ed his broth­er’s two eldest sons to enter the min­istry, but his com­mu­nist father did not agree. The boys once brought a bro­ken wood­en cross from the church, say­ing they would repair it, but Mir­ga’s father, who had come back from a par­ty drunk at the time, took an axe and smashed it. Ever since he was cov­ered in bruis­es. The parish priest, who accord­ing to Šán­dor Mir­ga was also a com­mu­nist, told his father that he must have com­mit­ted some great sin for which God had pun­ished him. From then on, Mir­ga said, his father act­ed aggres­sive­ly every­where he went, and although he even­tu­al­ly turned to God, no doc­tor could cure him.