Katarina Dudi-Koťová

Katarina Dudi-Koťová was eight years old when the battlefront moved into eastern Slovakia. Her father was a blacksmith; his name was Jura and the Roma called him Dzurjus; her mother’s name was Haňa. One day her family was driven out of their home by German or Hungarian financial guards,[1] who occupied it. They also took over more Romani houses and raped Romani women. Katarina Dudi-Koťová recalled in particular a certain Šurana who was gang-raped by German soldiers under threat of being shot. Her family hid from the soldiers for the night in a neighbour’s attic. After being forced to leave their house, they took refuge with another Roma family at Starina. There they had to participate in cooking for the German soldiers. They were also expelled from there and found refuge at Stakčín, where they had a grandmother and other relatives. After a few days, the parents returned to Stakčín to see if their house was still occupied. The house was vacant, so her father harvested potatoes from their field. At that time, the area around Stakčín was being shelled, so the Roma and the gadjos took refuge in the surrounding forests. Katarina’s father did not manage to return to his family in time and hid from the shelling in a building. He was reunited with the rest of his family in the forest only after a few days. Hiding in the woods was difficult; they built a makeshift shelter and at night the Roma returned home to bake flatbreads and cook meat so that they would have something to eat.

When the Russians came, they were able to go back home. In their house they found a Russian with a horse. There were bunkers dug on two sides of the house and they found leftover food. She said that her dad drove the Russian and the horse away, and got rid of the bunkers. When word got out that the local blacksmith and his family had returned, the peasants brought them food.

[1] The Financial Guard, which policed the borders, dealt with customs issues and prosecuted smugglers.

After the war and after 1948, Katarina Dudi-Koťová’s father again worked as a blacksmith. Katarina helped him in the forge because her brother was in the army. She was good at drilling horse shoes, for example. At her parents’ home at the forge she also met her husband Ladislav, whose father was also a blacksmith. They married in 1955 and raised four children.