Vojtěch Demeter

Vojtěch Deme­ter’s fam­i­ly lived in a Roma set­tle­ment of about twelve hous­es, half a kilo­me­tre from the vil­lage of Veľopolie. His moth­er died when he was only nine weeks old. His father remar­ried and moved to a vil­lage about ten kilo­me­tres away, and the son and his father did not see each oth­er; Vojtěch Deme­ter lat­er had three half-broth­ers from his father’s sec­ond rela­tion­ship. He grew up with his grand­par­ents: his grand­moth­er Julia and grand­fa­ther Jan, a black­smith who made horse­shoes and ploughshares and was giv­en food, such as ribs or lard, for his work. The fam­i­ly was well off before the war. Vojtěch Deme­ter’s grand­fa­ther was an excel­lent musi­cian, play­ing at Jew­ish wed­dings and in a wine bar in Humen­né, where many Jews also lived. Most of them were shop own­ers and Vojtěch Deme­ter says they were good peo­ple; but dur­ing the war they were all tak­en away.

Accord­ing to Deme­ter, the Hlin­ka Guards behaved like Gestapo and hat­ed the Roma. After the Ger­mans arrived, the Roma hid out of fear for about three weeks. They went into the for­est five or six kilo­me­tres away from the vil­lage because the Ger­mans were afraid of the par­ti­sans, and did not go into the for­est. How­ev­er, the Roma did not lis­ten to the par­ti­sans’ warn­ings and returned home, believ­ing the Ger­mans would not do any­thing to them after all. It was a mis­take – one day about four cars full of Ger­mans came and forced six-year-old Deme­ter, his grand­fa­ther and grand­moth­er to walk the nine kilo­me­tres to Humen­né. Deme­ter’s great-grand­fa­ther, his grand­moth­er’s father named Jakub, who was old and inca­pable of walk­ing, accord­ing to the Ger­mans, was hit with a rifle butt, kicked and killed. They spent three days in sta­bles in Humen­né and then were tak­en in wag­ons to the camp in Dub­ni­ca nad Váhom.[1] Orig­i­nal­ly, they were prob­a­bly meant to go fur­ther, per­haps to Poland or Ger­many, but accord­ing to Deme­ter, there was nowhere to go, because the rail­way tracks and bridges had by then already been destroyed. There were many Roma in the camp, in sep­a­rate groups of chil­dren, women, and men; small chil­dren were allowed to stay with their moth­ers. The guards beat them, and the pris­on­ers had no prop­er clothes. Deme­ter had only a torn coat, and went bare­foot with­out trousers. They were giv­en watery soup and a piece of bread to eat, and if there was any­thing left in the kitchen, the guards pre­ferred to give it to the dogs. So they would go and col­lect pota­to peel­ings. The adults worked, car­ry­ing stones, doing what was, accord­ing to Deme­ter, point­less work. Lat­er, jaun­dice[2] spread in the camp, and Deme­ter fell ill too, but his grand­moth­er cured him with tea made from some leaves. Appar­ent­ly a pit had already been dug in which the pris­on­ers were to be shot, but before this hap­pened, the Rus­sians arrived at the camp, gave the pris­on­ers bread and let them go home. The Deme­ters walked all the way to Humen­né; every­thing was bro­ken and destroyed. When they got home, they found noth­ing at all; every­thing was burnt and reduced to dust. They got mate­ri­als and built a hut to have a place to sleep, but they had no clothes, and went bare­foot and naked.

[1] No date given.

[2] Prob­a­bly epi­dem­ic typhus that broke out there at the end of 1944.

Lat­er on, the Deme­ter fam­i­ly was giv­en cloth­ing vouch­ers and food tokens. Some Slo­vaks who had belonged to the Hlin­ka Guard dur­ing the war became turn­coats after the Rus­sians arrived. One local Slo­vak, for exam­ple, had been a cap­tain in Humen­né dur­ing the war, but under the com­mu­nists they made him chair­man of the Nation­al Committee.

After the war they spent two years in Slo­va­kia. Vojtěch Deme­ter went to the local school and attend­ed the music school in Humen­né. In 1947 the fam­i­ly moved to Prague; first they lived in Vinohrady, then in Smí­chov and Mod­řany, where four musi­cian fam­i­lies lived next to each oth­er. Vojtěch Deme­ter’s wife, who earned her liv­ing in Prague as a clean­er, came from the vil­lage of Ľubiša, about a kilo­me­tre from Veľopolie. Her father was also a musi­cian. They had known each oth­er from child­hood and lived togeth­er for forty-five years, until her death. For the last sev­en years she was very ill and Deme­ter nursed her at home. At first he did not speak Czech, so he and his wife and chil­dren spoke Romani at home; but their grand­chil­dren no longer under­stand Romani.

Deme­ter made his liv­ing from music. For his first few months in Prague he deliv­ered coal, but then he just played in wine bars with his own band called Vio­la. He was a band leader and played vio­la and bass, most­ly at the Bystri­ca wine bar on Národ­ní tří­da, and in the Inter­na­tion­al and Ambas­sador hotels, but his longest engage­ment, twen­ty-sev­en years, was at the Šumice wine bar. For a long time the band was employed by the Pragokon­cert agency. They per­formed in Poland, France, Greece and Ger­many, and were sup­posed to go to Dubai. The band Vio­la also per­formed in the films The Three Vet­er­ans and I Enjoy the World with You, and in the series Ambu­lance. They also played for impor­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­mu­nist régime, for exam­ple, for Gustáv Husák​’s birth­day, and after 1989 for Václav Klaus when he became Prime Min­is­ter, and for [Pres­i­dent] Václav Hav­el.