Michal Hlivka

* 1931

  • “When I fled across the border, I could hear some battlefront song from the guards around the fire. One of them got up and took his dog right up to the border to check it. I was about a hundred metres away from them. I jumped behind a big tree trunk, and he didn’t see me. There was no wind, and the dog must have sensed that someone was there. Luckily, I hid. I was lost. The soil at the border was ploughed and softened, so they could check it [for footprints]. I crossed the border about five times. It was dark in the night, with just the occasional bolt of lightning, which fortunately gave me an idea where I was, but a moment later it was pitch dark again. I had to wait out the night; I reckoned I’d set out with the first light of dawn. I overslept, the sun was up [when I awoke], and I realised I was lying a mere twenty metres or so from the border.”

  • “There was one wagon for the animals and a second one for us. When we came to Dubno below Kiev, we encountered the train with the Czechs who were going to our country. We stood there because cargo wagons had to give way to passenger and express trains. Suddenly, the cattle wagon opened up, and they asked us where we were going. They told us we were headed for hunger, poverty, and slavery. We had to get out in Dubno. There was a row of tall, old lime trees on one side of the station, and we could hear the sound of crows.”

  • “They chose a few of us prisoners who were diligent workers. As soon as we came there, we began weeding the potatoes. The potatoes were stubbed and the grass was high. Our hands were cut. Then we waited for lunch. We waited for our grub like in the army. I begged the officer who was in charge of us if I could climb up a tree to pick a few apples. He told me I was welcome to. I climbed up on to a branch that hung over the fence, and I jumped down on the other side of it. One other prisoner sensed that I wanted to escape, and he managed to as well.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 22.02.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 01:15:44
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of nations (in co-production with Czech television)
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I pushed Mum to move to Ukraine, and then I felt I was to blame

Hlivka Michal - wedding photo 1958
Hlivka Michal - wedding photo 1958
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Michal Hlivka was born in 1931 in the village of Ulič in eastern Slovakia. The family lived on a small farm. His father, a veteran of the Eastern and Italian fronts of World War I, could speak several languages and was regarded as an authority in the village. In the late 1930s he was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of the East Slovakian Region. The Munich Agreement caused Ulič to fall under Hungarian rule. As a Communist functionary, his father was arrested and later murdered in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944. After the war his mother took up the role of First Secretary of the Communist Party. In 1947 people in the village were offered transfer to Ukraine in exchange for the Volhynian Czechs who wanted to move to Czechoslovakia. The promises and persuasion of the Soviet commissar and Michal Hlivka, who believed in a fertile and prosperous land in the east, the family decided to emigrate. They came to the former Czech part of the village of Mirohošť. They had to hand their farming equipment and animals over to the kolkhoz, and Michal‘s sisters began working there. The witness decided to escape back home. He managed to cross the borders, but he returned to his family. He was arrested. He escaped after four months of prison. It took him three weeks to walk back to his native village on foot. He and his brother reached Olomouc, and he received Czechoslovak citizenship. After many requests and twenty years of trying, they managed to obtain permission for his mother and sisters to move to Czechoslovakia as well.