Gizela Boriková

“My dad was an orphan. He did not get anything from anybody. What he had was what he had built with his own hands: the field and the house that he built when he married. But he had to leave. Hungarians from southern Hungary went to Slovakia, but not all of them, only the wealthy people. They had to leave. (In contrast to Germans – ed.’s note), they were allowed to take absolutely everything with them. My parents had about three wagons, and they even carried manure and straw with them, because they had cattle. (Three or four families shared one train car; lots of animals could fit in there). The journey to Hungary took about two days, and the animals had to eat something. It had to be terrible.”

“The interrogation began. When was it? How did we get to know each other (the priest Václav Divíšek – ed.’s note)? Why did he keep coming to us? The investigator repeated the questions hundred times, waiting for me to make a mistake. I was sitting there for more than three hours. I breastfed my baby at that time, and I had so much milk that I thought that my breasts would burst when the time of my usual breast-feeding came. I told him: ‘Let me go home, my breasts are bursting, I will faint here.’ It hurt me. I have never experienced a feeling like that, because I always breastfed and I did not know what it was like to withhold the milk, if such thing was even possible. He replied: ‘Pshaw. Who will breastfeed your boy when we imprison you? We will place him to an infant care institute and that will be it.’ You can imagine how I felt.”