Ernest Kyrály

“Those were the days that, let’s say, they came when we were threshing, about fifteen of those grabbers, I didn’t know where they came from and they ordered that firstly we had to meet the given contingent and then we could keep only the leftovers. However, they took everything regardless of what we would sow or what the children would eat. It was not only my dad’s case but almost the half of the village; mainly the prosperous farmers were forced to submit to it, too. It went this way until the year 1953 when the currency reform was carried out. Due to the currency reform in 1953, the system of tickets was abolished and people were able to buy anything without the restrictions; it was much easier then.”

“He summoned me to Streda nad Bodrogom and that young policeman, he was younger than me, he said and tried to convince me to sign that I had two hundred and fourteen crowns or two hundred and sixteen crowns left. He just forced me to sign. I said: ‘You could probably kill me here but I won’t sign what you fancy.’ ‘You won’t?’ ‘No.’ I didn’t want to sign it, so he slapped my face. And as he hit me, I was such a cavalier; I didn’t get scared, I settled an old score immediately, he didn’t even have a chance to dodge. I hit him so strongly that he overturned that hanger where he had a belt, flat cap and clothes as well. As he overturned it, there was another policeman who entered the room and held something in his hand, I didn’t know what, but surely he wasn’t from Streda, he was unfamiliar to me. I felt a burst of pain around my eye. He punched me here on my head and neck. And I went down, I didn’t know how long I had been unconscious and when I came to myself, the room was empty, I was dirty from the dust and the blood was everywhere as they battered me. I clawed my way to the car and couldn’t come around from what had happened. Finally, I was aware that I had to get out from there. So I went to my car like a dog, I crawled on all four to it. Outside, there was a car, so I got in and drove home. Trust me; I had been lying in the bed for eight days. Then, I ... went to Trebišov to say and file a complaint about that policeman. There was one prosecutor, I remember his name was Bajúz, and he spoke Hungarian as well. That prosecutor warned me to stop because I could have had an accident and then I would have maybe kicked the bucket.”

“Once he warned me, he was a member as well, namely it was Ladislav Fuchs. He was a State Security member too, and he called me Ernest, he warned me because he was a good acquaintance of me: ‘Erne, do something, we were said that it’s necessary to get rid of you, that no self-employed is desirable here, we have socialist organizations for distributing the goods. Do something as quickly as possible or otherwise, we will have to confiscate your logbook, so just do something if you can.’”

“In 1957 the situation became unbearable. At night Július Trošku came to us, he was here a secretary or a chairman, I am not sure, probably the secretary of the Municipal Committee (MNV) and he came and told my father: ‘Mr. Kyrály, you should access to the collective farm, you have stayed alone, or otherwise they will come tomorrow and arrest you.’ And there were another four or five people. He didn’t lie to me; about twenty men came to our house the next day. It was in the morning, so together with my father we went gathering hay because we were supposed to deliver it to the contingent. Well, we went; we loaded the hay with the intention to take it to the nearby village. It was the village of Boľ where we should have brought the hay to. I don’t know; there were seven or eight quintals of it. We had loaded it, came home, we left an ox and axe in front of the gate and went indoors for breakfast, because it was about ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and we even hadn’t had breakfast yet. While we were eating, suddenly twenty or fifteen men appeared at our yard; they came down on my dad immediately, terrorized him, and asked why he refused to access as he stayed the last one. ‘Anyway, you have just a couple of hours,’ they said. ‘Sign it or we will take you.’”