WWII-era massacre of Roma at the Little Danube in occupied Slovakia 80 years ago remains unpunished
Eighty years after the end of World War II, the bones of murdered Roma people still lie on the banks of the Little Danube in Slovakia. Their bodies have not found a dignified resting place, despite the fact that Czechoslovak State Security (StB) conducted two investigations into the massacre in the postwar period.
No one has ever been punished for these crimes against humanity. The StB investigation file, which runs to hundreds of pages, concluded that the public did not want the case of the March 1945 murder of the Romani people from Hurbanovo to be reopened.
The southern territories of present-day Slovakia were annexed to Miklós Horthy‘s Hungary after the Vienna Arbitration, adopted on 2 November 1939. The situation in those occupied territories was not much different from the situation in the rest of Europe.
Various lists of Jews and Roma were compiled and the registration of “hostile elements” was part of the expulsion of part of the population from public life. Romani people were not allowed to enter the public spaces or attend school.
The situation gradually became radicalized – proposals were made from journalistic and political circles to establish forced labor camps for Romani people or to deport them from Hungary altogether. The position of the Roma worsened in early 1944 after the occupation of Hungary by the Nazi German Army and Horthy’s subsequent resignation.
The proposals to establish forced labor camps became a reality. Romani men in particular were exploited for manual labor.
Deportations gradually took place, too – Roma from the occupied southern regions were concentrated in Komárno, from where they were sent to Dachau by train. It is not known how many thousands of Roma were taken from there to Nazi concentration camps, nor how many of them never returned.
As in other occupied territories, southern Slovakia was also subjected to the massacres of communities during the liberation struggles. One of the most tragic events, in which almost 60 Romani women, children and men died, took place in the village of Slatina (Levice district).
Shortly before Christmas 1944, the Red Army managed to liberate Slatina. However, a few days later, German troops reoccupied the area and took revenge on the Romani community.
The Nazis herded the Roma into one of the houses in Slatina and set it on fire. Anybody who attempted to escape was shot dead.
The victims of that war crime are buried in a mass grave in the local cemetery, and since 2007 the gravesite has been supplemented with the names of the victims who have been identified. A similarly bloody, senseless attack took place at the end of March 1944 on the territory of the municipality of Trhová Hradská.
Local members of Hungary’s Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt), led by Jozef Barkóczi, murdered 37 Romani residents of occupied Hurbanovo and 10 Romanian soldiers. The events were preceded by the arbitrary apprehension of almost 80 Romani residents of the settlement of Šárad in Hurbanovo (then called Ógyalla in Hungarian).
The local authorities, especially the Catholic priest, would not allow the execution of the prisoners directly in the town, so the Arrow Cross drove the prisoners westward. After about three days, they drove these confused, exhausted people into the waters of the Little Danube.
Anyone who attempted to get ashore was shot. The bodies of the victims remained on the shore for several days or were washed away by the water.
The perpetrators returned to their families. After the war, Jozef Barkóczi was brought to trial by a people’s tribunal, but not for what he had done to these Romani victims.
Czechoslovak State Security (StB) investigated the case in 1956, recorded statements from survivors and witnesses, and then shelved the file. The StB investigated the case repeatedly in 1974–1976, but stated that the crimes were already statute-barred and that the public did not want the case reopened.
Any relatives of these Romani victims likely have no idea what happened to their forebears at the end of the Second World War. Just as they were then, they are powerless people today, probably with problems maintaining their very existence, who will not be seeking justice 80 years after the war.
Slovak society is not seeking justice in their case, either.
