Anna Matiová

“When I came to Geča, nearby the church there used to be a big bridge and then it had been dynamited, it was called Ždaňský bridge. Well, Ždaňský bridge had been blasted off, and when I was at home, the small bridge near Malá Čaňa was dynamited as well and it was such a large concrete bridge. I recall that even pictures dropped down of the wall, so close it was, because we lived really near. I had such experiences after the Russians’ arrival.”

“They wanted to have an order. So in the church, you know, when we go to the church for a mass, it was celebrated neither in Hungarian nor in Slovak, but in Latin. And immediately after we had sung in Slovak, we were forbidden to do so, even though we were allowed to sing in Hungarian. If somebody could sing in Hungarian, they did so, but those who couldn’t, didn’t sing at all. And among the Catholics there were not many people speaking Hungarian. Among the Calvinists there were more people speaking Hungarian, therefore their situation was also much better.”

“Well, after their arrival, of course, the life was not that bad, actually we fared quite well during the first two years and even though we hadn’t much money, everything was cheap and it got better after they had come. Later, as I remember, everything changed. I finished school and then I went to the town to find a job. Because otherwise we had no money, we went for work. Just like nowadays people go for work to foreign countries, we went to the town, we served as housemaids there.”

“Because the Russians came. The Russians came first, and I remember I would also have been shot dead since some Russians came up to our funduš (building site), where we already lived. At that time I cooked steamed buns, I remember it like it was today. And they asked us for something to eat, so I gave them those buns. As the Russian bit to the bun, jam ran out of it suddenly and he was so surprised that he took a gun and wanted to shoot us. He thought we put something there. Fortunately there were some older guys, who calmed him down somehow and told him that he didn’t have to be afraid, that we really didn’t want to poison him or something like that. He would have shot us there, so I say we still have to learn.”