Vasil Demeter

Vasil Deme­ter’s father fought in World War I and is spo­ken of as a decent, hon­est and hard-work­ing man who helped poor peo­ple, Roma and Slo­vaks – he invit­ed them to his home where they could bathe, shave and sleep. He made his liv­ing as a vil­lage black­smith and musi­cian, and the fam­i­ly had a house right in the vil­lage. Deme­ter had five broth­ers, and when they grew up they used to per­form with their father, even for Jew­ish wed­dings, because they knew their songs. His moth­er’s younger broth­er Petres, who came from a mixed Roma-Pol­ish fam­i­ly, lived with the fam­i­ly from the age of about thir­teen or four­teen. Petres learned to play the vio­lin from Deme­ter’s father and lat­er com­pet­ed with him as a musi­cian. He was unpop­u­lar in the fam­i­ly because of his vio­lent tem­per and ten­den­cy to violence.

Vasil Deme­ter was sent to the camp called Legaňa in Hanušovce nad Topľou on the basis of a tip-off: his uncle Petres told the gen­darmes that Deme­ter’s father had been a legion­naire in World War I and all his sons were com­mu­nists. Only Vasil was at home, his broth­er Buger was in Svid­ník and Pol­jak was with the army at the front, so the gen­darmes took only him. It was sum­mer;[1] he had to pack and say good­bye to his par­ents. He said those who were polit­i­cal were put in Petič, while those who were not polit­i­cal were placed in Legaň, which was a worse camp, with more pun­ish­ments.[2] His par­ents did not find out where he was for three months, and then his moth­er walked 70 kilo­me­tres from Ladomirová with Vasil’s future wife to see him, car­ry­ing a pack­age of food. They were unable to rec­og­nize him because he was so thin. The con­di­tions in the camp were appalling, lice, fleas and bed­bugs, and the pris­on­ers had to get up at 4.00 a.m. and work from morn­ing till night, and often overnight. They would eat roots or raw beets out of hunger, and when the guards caught a pris­on­er in the process, they would beat him up – he got a hun­dred and fifty blows on his legs; and then they had to take him to the bar­racks in a wheel­bar­row because he was unable to walk. They would also pun­ish a pris­on­er by tying a rock to his back and anoth­er rock to his pick­axe, and he had to work like that. If any­one broke his leg, he had to work sit­ting down. In the morn­ing they were giv­en bit­ter black cof­fee and forty grams (1.4 ounces) of dry bread, with pota­toes and orach (moun­tain spinach) for lunch. They only had meat once in all that time – thir­ty or forty grams of sausage at East­er. Deme­ter, recall­ing the star­va­tion, men­tions how he once car­ried a dying pris­on­er to the camp in a wheel­bar­row. The man kept a piece of sausage in his pock­et, which Deme­ter took and ate it; the man was twen­ty-six or twen­ty-sev­en years old and died from the effects of star­va­tion and overwork.

Deme­ter was in the Legaňa camp with a cousin named Petre, who was an orphan, and they helped each oth­er. Deme­ter’s moth­er was allowed to bring him food, and thanks to the fam­i­ly’s good rela­tions with a Slo­vak gen­darme from their home vil­lage, vis­its were allowed. There was noth­ing to eat at home, but she cheat­ed the oth­ers so she could always bring some­thing for her son. Vasil’s younger broth­er would go to pick cher­ries so he could sell them, and his moth­er would buy food for Vasil with the mon­ey. His cousin Petre decid­ed to esape one day, even tempt­ing Deme­ter, but he decid­ed to stay as he was afraid they would kill his par­ents. Anoth­er cousin[3] also escaped, but Uncle Petres turned him in to the gen­darmes. The Roma from Mirošov tried unsuc­cess­ful­ly to escape – when they were returned to the camp, the guards ordered Deme­ter to beat them. He did­n’t want to, so he just punched one of them in the eye, and the guards­man beat him for it. The refugees were then tied to the rail­way track and beat­en until one of them defe­cat­ed on the gen­darme’s boot and was forced to lick it off. After­wards, when Deme­ter’s moth­er brought him bread, he shared it with this same man.

After a year, Deme­ter was trans­ferred to a camp in Dub­ni­ca nad Váhom and from there again a year lat­er to Ila­va, which he con­sid­ered the worst. At that time he was already eigh­teen years old, and so he was con­script­ed into the army. They were tak­en to Ukraine, to Kiev, with only five Roma on the train with him. After six months, he fled home from the front with oth­er sol­diers and helped the par­ti­sans. The only per­son to know about it was his father, who was afraid that the fam­i­ly would be mur­dered because of Vasil. Vasil was still a sol­dier and was afraid of being caught, so he fled to the vil­lage of Čier­na, where he hid with two Slo­vaks in the tow­er of the Jew­ish syn­a­gogue. How­ev­er, the Ger­mans dis­cov­ered them and Deme­ter escaped pun­ish­ment thanks to the inter­ces­sion of the local non-Romani may­or, who knew his father. He and his preg­nant wife then hid in the woods and with Roma in the vil­lage of Rovná, where their son was born. A Ger­man doc­tor, a major,[4] told them to hide in the woods because the sit­u­a­tion was get­ting worse. It was cold, they were sleep­ing out­side under the bush­es, and final­ly arrived at his wife’s moth­er’s house, where the Ger­mans came and took all the men of the fam­i­ly away. They had to dig trench­es. He says it was in Jan­u­ary, on his birth­day.[5] He escaped again, but while escap­ing he stepped on a mine which bad­ly injured his leg. He spent three days with­out food in a bunker and then some­how reached the edge of a vil­lage, where peo­ple heard his cries and car­ried him to the vil­lage. How­ev­er, the front was mov­ing through the region, so it took sev­en days before he was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal in Barde­jov where he spent four months. 

[1] He does not spec­i­fy the year.

[2] Both were sep­a­rate work­places of the Hanušovce nad Topľou camp, which was cre­at­ed because of the con­struc­tion of the Prešov-Strážske rail­way line.

[3] Vojtěch Grundza (ed.), see his tes­ti­mo­ny in the database.

[4] He does not spec­i­fy which army.

[5] He does not give the year.

When Deme­ter returned home from the hos­pi­tal, he found only a burnt-out, ruined place. The only thing left stand­ing was the forge in which they had lived. With noth­ing to live on, they ate what­ev­er they could find, bak­ing, for exam­ple, what they called kirňavky out of frozen rot­ten pota­toes that had been left in the field until spring. Lat­er, the Rus­sians sent a kilo or two of bran per per­son. When he had recov­ered a lit­tle and was walk­ing on sticks, he set about build­ing a house, because there were four broth­ers at home and there was not enough room for his new fam­i­ly. They gath­ered wood from the bunkers to use for build­ing, and each built a shack of some mate­r­i­al from the ruined sta­bles or barns. Many peo­ple died of typhus at that time, and the dead were most­ly col­lect­ed and buried by Roma and poor­er Slo­vaks. Vasil Deme­ter’s fam­i­ly also lived on post-war aid – first from the non-Romani vil­lage sec­re­tary, a for­mer par­ti­san who sup­port­ed the poor, and lat­er from UNR­RA. His injured leg was still hurt­ing, so he was unable to fin­ish the house until the oth­er men helped him. They had one small room where he, his wife and their son lived. How­ev­er, the boy fell ill and died when he was sev­en months old.

“And then I went to per­form with my broth­ers and it was fine,” Vasil Deme­ter con­clud­ed his story.