Jan Pohoriliak

“As students we wanted to fight against the Hungarian occupation. Together with the teachers we were given rifles from Czechoslovak police officers who stayed. We managed to resist the Hungarian army for ten hours so that members of the Czechoslovak and Rusyn administration had time to pack up all the important documents and money and escape abroad (it was in March 15 1939). Czechoslovak citizens returned back to Czechoslovakia.”

“When they opened fire the horses began to panic including my horse who jumped right into the middle of the road. Our tanks that were coming to support the Czechoslovak infantry clashed with German tanks and the battle began. My horse jumped sideways to avoid an explosion and one of our tanks hit him and broke his back. I managed to slide out of the straps and fell right in the middle of the road so I landed under the tank between the tracks. They shot the horse on the spot because he was suffering too much and they dragged him away. Then they started looking for me and they couldn't find me anywhere until somebody had the idea to look under the tank. I was lying there, unconscious after a severe concussion. They took me to the hospital and after three days when I was slowly regaining consciousness, Svoboda came and told me: 'So you killed my horse.' Because at the front, every officer chose a horse and he wanted this one because it was a nice black stallion. 'But the main thing is that you are alive,' he added. And I promised that I will find him a nice black horse. 'We will find a replacement for him,' I said.”

“I got to the Marsalansk camp situated about two hundred kilometers from the North Sea. There was tundra and taiga and nothing else and we were supposed to build roads there. The worst thing was the food. We got 300 grams of bread for a day. With this kind of bread we could make small figures like chess and ludo. And then after a few months of hunger, cold and hard labor diseases came. There were different kinds of typhus, Spanish fever, diarrhea, avitaminosis – that was followed by ulcers and sores which we could not cure anyhow and which were very painful. We had to survive all that. And when we found in 1942 that there was a Czechoslovak army being formed we wanted to join right away. But we could not join immediately. It took sometimes up to half a year and a lot of those who wanted to join died in the meantime. There were about 25 thousand fugitives in Marsalansk – Poles, Romanian, Rusyn, Ukrainian and Czechoslovak – and after one year there were about only seven thousand left.”

“Hungarians opened fire because we were traitors and Soviets when they saw us at the border opened fire as well. So we were under cross fire. Then I took a white handkerchief and put in on a rod and waved so that they knew we wanted to surrender. So the Soviets stopped shooting. We had two dead, we took one of them with us and had to leave the other one behind. There was nothing we could do, the fire was too heavy. The terrain was a bit wavy so we could get save to the Soviets. They accepted us. Of course they took our rifles but we gave them valuable information about the Hungarian army so they were satisfied and gave us a written notice as evidence that we surrendered voluntarily and that every army unit should let us go freely. We went for three days to a small town with a train station on the tracks that went to Kharkiv. A group of Hungarian prisoners caught up with us. We were proceeding slowly and they were fast because the Russian guards forced them to hurry up. They were taking them to a prisoners' camp. When we told them who we were they wanted us to join the Hungarians. I told them that we would not join the prisoners, that we had surrendered voluntarily and I showed them the notice. The commander took it, tore it into eight pieces and began to roll a cigarette with one of the pieces. I jumped at him and protested that it is an important document that our lives depended on that. But he just pointed his rifle at me and wanted to shoot me.”