Mária Lendelová

"My daddy couldn't even count to ten. Just one, two, three, four, five. They were illiterate people - not knowing to read or to write, or even to make their signature. I would take his hand holding a pencil... 'Look, I can write now,' he'd say. I controlled his hand, writing J-U-L; his name was Julius. We tried it three or four times but he couldn't even do a single letter. He told me: 'Let go, girl. I can't do it.' - 'Yes, you can. If you learn this, you'll know to write.' I drew lines for him - straight and skew, so that he'd learn. He could write the letter J but nothing more. He waved his hand and said: 'I'm no good, girl. Let it be. I won't know to write. I hadn't learned when I was small, so not even now.' I replied: 'But you can learn even at your age. So that you at least know to write your name, when necessary.' - 'I'll just write three crosses and that's it.' That always made me laugh."

"How was it in Slovakia - did the gadjos support Romani people? - "For what I can remember, it was good when I was small. There was a certain bond between people due to what they went through. The gadjos accepted the Roma because they themselves also had it hard during WW II. They liked my dad. The gadjos trusted the Roma a lot. They helped each other. Gadjos and others helped the Roma. When grass was about to be scythed, they knew who to come to - my dad, my brother and others. 'Let's go scythe the grass, I'll give you something in return.' They made some money, working for the gadjos. Scything meadows or transporting it on carts. They did these sorts of jobs because there was destitution, no money, no food. The gadjos helped them. Or when a cow died, the gadjo woman would say: 'Use the meat.' I remember a cow being hit by a thunderbolt on a field. I could see it with my own eyes. My mum wouldn't have it. She'd say: 'It was killed by a bolt, I can't eat it now?' She liked the better things. Not even my dad would eat it. But the other Roma people were happy they had meat. So, they'd carve the whole cow up."