Katarína Žigová

Katarína Žigová’s father was born in 1894; he fought in World War I and came home wounded. Her older brother was born in 1918.

Her brother was drafted into the army and sent to Russia, but he escaped and joined the army of Ludvík Svoboda. After four years he returned wounded. She said he had suffered like poor livestock. Katarína’s ​“pobratim” [brother of her own choice] was also shot during the war at Liptovský Mikuláš, as were many other Roma elsewhere.

At that time, partisans went around the forests and warned people where the German soldiers were. In Slovinky [called Felsoszlovinka/Felsoszalánk during the war] there was a mine, and Katarína’s father also worked there until his accident. The soldiers herded men into this mine and wanted to set fire to the exit. At the last moment, the partisans intervened, shooting and dispersing the Germans, and the men were rescued from the mine.

The German soldiers took out their anger with the partisans on the Roma, and tormented them, forcing them all to work hard without distinction. Girls as young as fifteen and women up to the age of fifty-five had to walk twenty-one kilometres and dig trenches while hungry. The men also had to walk; they were beaten with sticks and rifles, and kicked. They only left them alone when the rich villagers stood up for them, saying that the Germans ought to be catching partisans.
But the Roma defended the partisans and hid them, so the soldiers went house to house looking for them.

They came to Katarína’s family one day because they received news that her brother was in Russia. They asked the mother about her son, but she pointed to the younger 17-year-old. They shouted at the father, but he knew German among other languages and would not give in. They berated their daughter, who wore thick glasses and could hardly see, saying that they had not seen her digging trenches. Her brother defended her by arguing that she couldn’t see. When the soldiers came again some time later, the sister happened not to have her glasses on and the soldiers, thinking that she had lied to them the last time, wanted to shoot her. The brother again stood up for her, so they pointed the rifle at him, but an interpreter intervened and vouched for the sister, confirming that he knew her and that she really couldn’t see. So they left them alone, but threatened to blow up the house. So the family immediately left – the parents packed up their blankets and some clothes and fled into the woods with all five children. The other Roma from the village also went into hiding. When they returned home, they found the cottages riddled with bullets. They had nothing left, they were starving.

During the war, people were unwilling to allow Roma into villages because they thought they would get lice from them. At Slovinky, however, they stood up for the Roma; the non-Roma mayor declared that their Roma were clean and did not allow them to have their hair shaved off. The Roma received similar treatment from the gadjos at Kolinovka, where Katarína said the Roma engineer Emil Pokuta was from, and also at Žakárovce.

After the war, things were not much better. There was no work, there was nothing to live on, Katarína wrote. That was why Romani people left for work in the Czech Republic. She said that many Romani people still lived far outside the village in places where they settled after being driven out by the Hlinka Guard during the war.