Vasil Hajdur

“I hinted my parents I was going to go abroad. My Mummy and Dad were both strongly against it because I was their eldest son. We were getting ready for a month or two. I got all my stuff ready secretly. When I was leaving I wanted to write 'Goodbye.' All of a sudden, as if someone took my hand and said: 'No, you are not leaving for good, you will be back!' So I wrote 'See you.'”

“Suddenly a guard called me – it was in spring in 1942 – to set a fire for him because it was still frosty. He was walking around me with his gun because it was a command. He said to me: 'What are you here for? ' I said: 'For crossing the border.' 'And you are a Czechoslovak?' Some people stated Hungarian citizenship but I asserted I was Czechoslovak. I said it to him and he replied: 'You'll join the Czechoslovak Army.' I didn't trust him very much because whenever we complained about something they used to say: 'A búdět, co búdět.' (What will happen, that will happen) And nothing ever happened.”

“We crossed the Soviet Union border on July 15, 1940. We were five and our guide was Nikolai Schuhaj's son. We crossed the the pastures in the Carpathian Mountains and got to the Soviet border at night. We said goodbye to our guide, he only told us: 'Go down the hill, there is a brook there. Follow the brook and you find a Soviet frontier station there.'”

“When the Germans broke through our defense, there came a car and we went to that hell. I shivered down my spine. When you have no idea about that, you are scared even more. You don't know how to protect yourself or what to do. You think you would be hit by every bullet which was fired. When a grenade swished over, I fell to the ground but it had been away already. You couldn't get rid of the thought you would be hit. But once you get into it you forget your fear. Well, it's either you or the other one.”

“I got there at peacetime. Those who wanted to work, they did and those who didn't want to work, they didn't. People used to say: ' Rabotaješ – kušaješ, nerabotaješ, nekušaješ.' (You work – you eat, you don't work – you don't eat.) Of course they let those who didn't work die of starvation. There were three types of food: Those who fulfilled 100% of the norm, they got better food. Those who did more than 100%, those got three-course meals – a kilo bread and their breakfast, lunch and supper. There were the Polish and the Romanians there. They brought full pieces of suitcase with them. They said: 'We are not going to do anything for the Communists.' They were selling their stuff then. There was a canteen there, you could buy there anything you liked and you didn't have to go to work.”

“I studied at Real Grammar School in Prague. Terrible, absolutely terrible, a disaster. You might not believe it that I cried over a book. Within two weeks or a month I couldn't remember a word from the lectures. The teachers provided me with the books I needed because I couldn't even read properly in Czech. They gave me everything because I couldn't keep up with writing. When we were translating from Latin to Czech, the teacher always looked over my shoulder and said: 'Mr. Hajdur, that's Y.' And in a minute again: 'That's I.' And I asked: 'Mrs., please, how do I know? I or Y, it doesn't make a difference.'”