Dubnica nad Váhom, former Custodial camp for Romany people
Dubnica nad Váhom, Slovakia
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Bad and the worst memories

Available in: English | Česky | Slovensky

In November 1944 the family of Mrs. Mária Kormanová was interned in the camp in Dubnica nad Váhom. “They led us there under automatics. I remember it like today there were such short and elongated barracks with bunk beds from which our heads stuck out. There were so many of us that we slept one next to the other, there wasn´t even a small spot left. Men were at one side, women with children at the other one, that´s how they took our father from us.” Mrs. Kormanová has the worst memories of Farbár, the camp´s high-muck-a-muck of Romany origin. “It was cruel. What they did with our women! They stripped them, beated them, poured cold water over them. It´s impossible to describe what happened there. It was terrible. And all of this led one Romany man, who got this function from Germans and who thrashed us. Germans placed him there as a screw. I just remember his name was Farbár. Comparing to Germans he thrashed us. I don´t know whether he was paid for it. I remember once when I went to beg for food, he hit me with a nightstick so hard that I fell down.” Mrs. Kormanová lively recalls frightening scenes of how the German soldiers chose pretty women in the camp and raped them. “You know, at first they took the pretty women. For example, my sister-in-law, my brother´s wife was beautiful. She was pregnant in the fifth month. They caught her, raped, and that´s how she ended up there… It was truly a horror. When the Germans saw a nice girl, they took her, dragged down to such a casing and there they raped her. Pretty women used to smudge their faces by soot just so that the Germans wouldn´t choose them and drag somewhere.”

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Dubnica nad Váhom, former Custodial camp for Romany people

Available in: English | Česky | Slovensky

The custodial camp for Romany people was established in November 1944 at a place of the former working unit in Dubnica based on the regulation of Ministry of the National Defense. It was one and only facility of its kind in Slovakia, where Romany people were sent from all over the country. In a short time, the number of prisoners exceeded capacity of the facility: in December 1944 more than 700 people languished here. Conditions in the camp were very harsh. Especially children and old people greatly suffered because of extraordinary winter and bad hygienic conditions. Many of them died on pneumonia, but the biggest number of victims took epidemic of typhoid fever, which arose here in January 1945. Because of the fear from disease the Romany people began to run away from the camp. This, however, called forth fear in citizens from the surrounding villages that the disease might spread. It was prohibited to send further prisoners into the camp and the facility got to quarantine. At that time Germans took control over the camp and decided to solve the situation radically. On February 23, 1945 under the mask of transporting people to a hospital, they loaded the sick on a lorry, took them into the premises of the local armory, and brutally killed these prisoners. After the quarantine ended it was impossible to restore the camp anymore. The battlefront approached, the remaining prisoners ran away, the facility was demounted and subsequently perfectly liquidated.

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