Zita Kuchárová

When Zita Kuchárová was eighteen years old in 1944, she went to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in search of work. She was light-skinned, so she was not considered Romani. At that time, work was offered by so-called agents, and because there was poverty and few job opportunities in Slovakia, she made her way to the Protectorate. She was employed on a farm at ​“Ropšice” [probably Hrobčice] near Bílina. They always took entire groups, twenty or thirty people. In November, however, the Germans arrived and did not let anyone from the group go home to Slovakia. They also worked in Tábor, in Plana nad Lužnicí and near České Budějovice.

In 1944, she and others were taken to Hamburg. They had to line up so that the German inhabitants could choose suitable workers from among them. Since Kuchárová knew German – she had learned it in northern Bohemia – she was chosen by a German actress, whose husband was a former airman, to be her maid. She had a good time with her and they would go shopping in Munich, but she was not allowed to leave the house in the evenings. Had she not known German, she would have ended up working in the fields or in a concentration camp.

In Germany she used to meet French, Italian, British and Polish prisoners. Once, on her way to get milk, she was stopped by a Polish boy of about sixteen, by the name of Juzek.[1] He begged her for food; she was afraid, but she let him fetch water and then asked the lady of the house to give him something to eat in return. She too was afraid, risking her life, but she gave Zita the keys to the cellar, who took bread for the boy. However, an ​“officer” saw her and threatened to kill her. She replied that she did not care. In the end the lady defended her, saying that Zita had given it to him out of her own rations. Because of this, Zita said she could not complain about ordinary German civilians. However, those who were in the concentration camps abused people regardless of nationality and age; they killed Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Roma and others, conducted experiments on them, and gave them little food. The Polish prisoners of war on the farm, for instance, were given only three potatoes in their skins and black coffee. The French prisoners of war were at least given bread and jam in the morning and were allowed to sit at the table; at least they were treated like human beings, she said.

While Zita was away, tragedies occurred in several villages, which she only learned about after her return. In Dúbravy, about twelve men were murdered, leaving behind women and children. Zita knew them, they were nice boys: musicians – Juraj Kľinec and his sons Peter, Josef, Samuel, Imro, Juraj, and Mikloš, as well as Kalman and Béla Kľinec and the Haverľas. At Očová they killed Fana Berkyová, whom Zita also knew; her husband Alexander afterwards took care of five children on his own. She also heard about the burning of a settlement in Žiar nad Hronom and the murder of its inhabitants.

[1] Surname not given.

In May 1945, Zita Kuchárová returned home to Očová. She found only her mother and brother, otherwise everything had been burnt down and there was poverty everywhere. So she left for work in the Czech part of the republic and married when she returned to Slovakia. However, in the spring [probably 1946], she and her husband left for the Czech lands again.