"Hard labour I had to do in Germany: we were carrying iron, stones, railway tracks and sleepers. The work was incredibly strenuous – all done by hand. Ten men carried one rail. Now, if we had all been the same size, it would have worked, but one was taller, the other shorter. And the taller guys suffered most. And how I managed to get out of this? I met some boys who were also from Carpathian Ruthenia, they have already lived here for some time. They worked in the canteen and asked me whether I would like to wash the dishes. I agreed, and thus I ´laboured´ the following three years in the kitchen and learnt to cook.”
“We joined the army of our own will, even though we all knew we were going to certain death, because fighting the Germans has never been an easy task. They fought like beasts, had good (automatic) weapons, artillery, tanks. Slovakia is a mountainous country. We came from the east, passed through Stropkov and Prešov, and advanced to the west. Shooting all days and nights, fighting, dead soldiers. The Germans defended their positions furiously. They had their orders from Hitler, who was like a god to them. So we pushed through Slovakia like this all the way to Moravia. When we got there, they gave as a welcome as if we were Moravians. We had tears in our eyes.”
The signallers were in the bunker and I was standing crouched nearby. I was listening to the messages from the radio transmitter they had there. At one moment I bent down, and a mine flew right above me. Luckily we were standing on a slope, so the mine hit the ground about 20 metres away from us. This was, as they say, the last moment rescue, because if I had been standing, I would have got it right into my head. Then, when it passed over me and I saw it hit the ground, I thought – now I have been saved again. And things like that happen many times.”
"Hungarians transported my father to the eastern front, there he fell ill. They diagnosed him with typhus, and tried to cure him in Romania. He was in a very serious condition, already on his deathbed, when one of his colleagues, his friend, brought him some spirit, my father drank it and it saved him."
"From Carpathian Ruthenia I ran away to Slovakia. The Slovaks sent me to Vienna and then we were gathered by a Ukrainian nationalistic organization which fought for free Ukraine. This organization transported all of us, young boys and girls who were here, to large army barracks in Vienna. I spent three days naked there, only with a towel wrapped around my body. Then they brought us for rehabilitation to some place near the Hungarian border."
Ivan Pap was born in 1922 in the village of Klačanovo in Carpathian Ruthenia as the eldest of four sons. He spent his early childhood at his grandfather’s place in Ivanovice. At the age of six, he moved with his parents to Boutradí, where his father was granted some acres of land. The family used this property to grow some crops and to graze cattle. After finishing his studies, Ivan Pap decided, owing to the circumstances of that time, to relocate to Slovakia. He went there in 1939, but after a few days was turned over by Slovak authorities to a Ukrainian Nationalistic organization in Austria. There, he underwent a process of rehabilitation, after which he was offered the possibility of studying in Austria. Pap accepted, however, his study results were not satisfactory, and was therefore sent to work in Germany.He spent a total of three and a half years in Germany, the first six months working hard at a construction of a factory. Afterwards, he worked in a kitchen. Then, he made use of the leave he was granted to visit the family, and he did not come back anymore. In 1943, he was drafted into the Hungarian army. He went through an arduous training for mountain huntsmen, and during one training session he caught a severe cold, which was later diagnosed as nephritis. He was hospitalized in the army for some time, and later dismissed for home rest. At that time, the Soviet army was approaching Hungary. Ivan became a captive for about one month. In December 1944 he escaped from Russian captivity by means of applying to the Czechoslovak army, together with some other captives. He served in the Czechoslovak army till the demobilization in 1946. All this time he worked as a cook. Once he suffered a minor injury, and twice narrowly escaped death. After the war, Pap worked shortly as a cook, later he married, had three children, and changed his profession. He worked in glassworks till his retirement.
