Štefan Habovský

* 1930

  • “When the situation subsided, the municipal authority ordered to search the fields and burry dead soldiers, if found. Not far from Trstená I found a German. He was naked, undressed, not wearing anything. He had maybe more than 50 pictures strewn around him. There was a trench and we buried him inside. We went on, but there were also older men with us youngsters, maybe six of us walked together.” “So it was the municipal authority that had sent you?” “Yes, the town hall. So we went further app. one and a half kilometer and we found another killed German in the bush. He was also naked, wearing only the wedding ring. They told us to go on and look further. They simply drove us off. I don’t know, if they broke his finger and took the ring or not, but we had to leave. When we found another dead body, we buried him and so on. As we proceeded towards Liesek direction, we found a Russian. He was normally dressed, including grenades or automatic. We took the grenades and played with them as kids.”

  • “We used to go there – to say the truth – probably during two or three weeks. Every night around seven or eight we went to that house, where we met. Each half an hour or every twenty minutes two people went for a walk towards the priest’s house and back. When they returned, another two took round and this way it went on. So during the night, one may had gone for a watch walk twice. But not even once we saw policemen or ŠtB members, or anybody. The priest probably didn’t know we were watching over him, however, someone knew it and sold us out.”

  • “They took us to the local authority, into one big room. We were called to come upstairs one by one. There was a committee of policemen and of others, and there they interrogated us. What we were doing, how we were doing it and so on. I don’t know, what exactly happened upstairs, but when about three people returned from the upstairs, they were crying. However, if they were beaten or what happened, I don’t really know.”

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    Trstená, 07.10.2017

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    duration: 01:37:03
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We agreed that we shall protect our priest, no matter what

Štefan Habovský as a soldier of criminal military service (1952)
Štefan Habovský as a soldier of criminal military service (1952)
photo: z archívu pamätníka

Štefan Habovský was born on May 4, 1930 and he comes from Trstená. In his youth he was apprenticed to become a mixed goods tradesman; since his childhood he helped as a waggoner and took care of the family farmstead. During the launch of the communist “Catholic Action” in 1949, along with the faithful, he participated in protecting the local priest. As a result he was sentenced to 5 months of imprisonment for alleged rebellion and scaremongering. He served his sentence in Ružomberok, where he as a prisoner worked on wood processing in the local paper mill. In years 1951 - 1953 he attended the compulsory military service in Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP) within which he was assigned to heavy mining work in Ostrava - Radvanice. He suffered an injury of skin corrosivity there. After returning from the military service he spent his working life in Trstená flax mill, which was later rebuilt to Tesla TV components factory. During the whole period of the communist regime he was considered politically unreliable. He was victimized and oppressed also due to his family’s unwillingness to join the cooperative (Joint Agricultural Cooperative - JRD) and to refusal of taking up membership in the communist party. Currently he lives retired with his wife Apolónia Habovská, née Brnčová, in Trstená.