Zuzana Tumiová

Zuzana Tumiová’s father was a blacksmith and musician. Many Roma also made baskets and brooms.

In 1941 or 1942, before the fighting broke out, Tumiová’s husband was digging tunnels. The Roma in Chyžné were only allowed into the village for one hour a day. If they stayed longer, they had their hair cut off. The Hlinka Guards destroyed the Roma cottages in the village and forced them to live outside the village near the forest. She remembered what a nice house they had before. The Roma were forced to work.[1] They came in vehicles to get them, and made the Roma dig shelters for them.

Tumiová added to her husband’s story about the Russian man and his wife who were captured by the Germans. The woman hid, but afterwards she fell to the ground broken-hearted.

[1] This was the forced labour that the Roma, and also Slovaks in some places, had to do for the Germans. (ed.)

Tumiová’s husband worked for forty years on construction sites and then laboured on the construction of the family house. One eye became infected and he lost it, and later he became blind in the other eye. They had nine children together, and all but one daughter married a Roma partner.