"In the evening there were brought Ruthenian carriages with horses. They brought us on and took to police station in Čop. We all had to get off and stand in a line to see everyone was there. I remember my mum was holding me all the time. We were there together with other citizens and children. As they wrote everything down, they took us to the flat of a Slovak doctor who also secretely left. They put us together in a large room. We sat down and men were leaning to the wall. I remember how sad and unhappy they were. What went on in their heads? They fought in a war, fertilized the soil, built the village, and they left everything and were left with nothing at all. That was a terrible reward."
"It was so terrible, so much shooting, that all walking patients had to go down the cellar to wait till it´s calm. They let me stay with the weights in my room as I could not move my leg. They put matracess all around my bed. There was a row of windows and twelve beds. I remembered a poem by Wolker called Twelve beds standing in a hallway. I was lying with only my elbow free. And suddenly a huge bang and through a window a splinter bounced to the opposite wall next to the cross and right to my bare elbow. I was burnt right away so began to scream. A nurse ran in an took the splinter, which was not red anymore, but still burning and hurt his hand. Then they took my bed to the hallway so I would be more covered there. But there was a wall and a door and a window too. All rooms were empty, but they began to take in new patients and they brought a seventeen year old girl to my room, who had an operation of her intestants. Nun nurse told me she would cry for water, but cannot get any. I heard her saying I am envious and without me knowing it, someone gave her water and she actually died. Nurse Apolénka was there with us and took a small chair and sat at my legs opposite to the door saying if anything was flying through the doors so she gets hit first and not me, as I was young. She was just a little older."
"When there was a mobilisation, so suddenly from the Hungarian direction airplanes were flying throwing our leaflets stating terrible gossip against Czechoslovakia: ,They have been eating your bread for a long time. Any Czech deserves a bullet in his head.´ Then in November our village was occupied by Hungarian policemen with carriages and all armed. They began to pluck slats of the fence and made fires. Our hens were also good for them."
Marie Čuboková, née Drozdová, was born on 27 June, 1931 in Stráž pri Čope, which was founded in 1923 by the WW1 legionaries. It was located in the territory of Slovakia right at the border with Ruthenia on the residual estate of Hungarian landlords. The base was created by sixteen families of our legionaries, who took several years, before they fertilized surrounding swampy soil. Yet after Vienna arbitration the settlement was occupied by Hungarian soldiers and the residents were forcibly evicted. The witness with her parents then lived in various parts of Moravia. After war the family wished to return to Stráž pri Čope, but Czechoslovakia contractually handed over Ruthenia to the Soviet Union, which occupied unilateraly a part of Slovakia, where also Straz pri Cope was located. So the family definitely lost all its property and Marie Čuboková has never been financially compensated, as the Act on financial settlement from 2009 refers only to the original territory of Ruthenia. Therefore they moved to border village Úvalno in summer 1945, where they got a house for installments left after original German owners. They were privatelly farming until 1951, before they were forced to join agricultural cooperative. Later Marie Čuboková studied pedagogic faculty and worked in an educational school group in Úvalno for a long time and also as a music and fine arts teacher in a local school.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
