„Quite a few people died there. Those lists have also been preserved somewhere. Well, there was also a complaint. I mentioned to you that the Red Cross commission from Switzerland came there, evaluated it there, wrote a rather large report about it, and then the situation improved. There were also many families with children in Nováky, and the children also had a school. And there was the possibility that those people who were interned there in the camp in Nováky could go to work with farmers from the surrounding villages. So this is the case of my mother, who went to one family. I mean, she now lives in Prievidza, but they had a farm in nearby Koša and she always went there to help, and basically the conditions were therefore more acceptable there. Gradually, the atmosphere and mood in the camp also improved. I know that many were in that 1947, in 1948, that even in that camp the discipline was already looser, sometimes they even stayed outside, but, I mean outside the camp. In the forty-eighth, as far as I know, that camp dissolved completely. So they had a solid party there? Yes, at first it was much more strict, they lived there en masse, what they write is that they only had some straw bags and they lived on the ground, that diseases were frequent there, that quite a lot of people, especially the elderly, died there, also several children, when they got sick. There, the health conditions in the first months were very difficult. It was overcrowded, the food was quite inadequate. It can be said, at least what they write, that twice a day some thin soup, something similar. So the conditions there were naturally not good then.“
„As part of the history of science and technology, I myself ensured the episode - the transport of Aurel Stodola's urn from Zurich to Liptovský Mikuláš, where he was born. Because that's where the care of these his ended... and that's where I got a trip to Zürich for a two-week study stay at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule directly from the academy's presidency. Well, for my involvement in the... And it was done by the Society for the History of Science and Technology, so he didn't even interfere there. There, no consent was needed from him. Did you ever go abroad as a child? Yes, it was. With Mother. The first time I got to Austria, to my aunt, my mother's sister, was in 1960. That was the situation when, in the sixties, my mother asked for a visit, it was a one-week visit in Salzburg. But there the condition was that my brother had to stay at home, so my mother took me. Well, I was probably more interested in these things then. The brother did not have such interests, I would say travel or something similar. Just like children back then. But in short, it was decided then that I went with my mother to Salzburg in Austria for a week and my brother had to stay at home.“
„When the evacuation ordered by Himmler came in October 1944, at first it was the children, schoolchildren and women who were evacuated from Handlová. That was in November. They went towards the Sudetenland. The whole school classes. So mom didn't go to school anymore, it was their it didn't catch on that much. But then the women also went to work in the area of northern Bohemia. The trade miners were evacuated just before the arrival of the front, that was March 1945. They went to northern Bohemia, to the area of Most, Lovka near Litvínov. There, the trade men continued to work in the mines . The miners who were there continued there. So they evacuated, one might say, even before the front arrived in Handlová. And at the beginning of April 1945, these Germans from Handlová, including my parents, were already evacuated to northern Bohemia.“
„I know cases where they had the opportunity, when they returned from evacuation, that their house was not occupied, so they went to their own house, but they were not the owners, because the house was confiscated. So they could then buy the house when they had the option. Or they bought it, as it was in our case, we lived in another part of Handlová. We had the opportunity to buy the house from other Germans who did not return. Your uncle, he bought his house again? Well, uncle, no, he didn't get there at all. You know, there had to be the possibility of buying the house. That house was already occupied. He didn't get there anymore. My uncle and I lived as neighbors. We were right next door. We, both my uncle and my mother, lived in a house owned by other Germans in another area of Handlova. He never got into his original house, which he built in the early 1940s. How did he actually feel? But he felt it as a sin. You know, he wanted to go back to that house. He had small children as well, so all his life he remembered, as long as I talked to him, that it was unfair to him. That he felt it was wrong. And when this opportunity arose, he went to Germany with his family at the end of the 60s.“
"Those forms for the population census, they were abused. Our Jewish fellow citizens were dramatically affected by it, as well as the Germans. Based on how they registered for the population census, their property was confiscated or they were displaced. So this concern was always there. However, sometimes they they couldn't speak German in public, meet, create organizations. So they were worried. In the 1950 census, there were 5,100 registered, and the ŠTB said in the news that there were about 25,000 Germans in Slovakia."
"From that close family, I'm the only one here in Slovakia, now at this time. The family is scattered. My cousins from my father's side, they already live in Germany. The uncle stayed here in Slovakia and left in 1968. From my mother's side, the youngest brother lives in Fulda, another brother in Schwabmünchen. The sister who was evacuated together with her mother in northern Bohemia was Louka pri Litvínov, they stayed there in Bohemia, the Sudetenland, they didn't return when they knew what the situation was like after the war. They moved in 68 to southern Germany. And one more of my mother's sisters, she stayed in Austria, Salzburg, considering that her husband had some more distant relatives there, who took them in shortly after the war and settled there."
"After the end of the Second World War, like other Germans, they were also stripped of their citizenship based on presidential decrees, forced labor was ordered, and their property was confiscated. For example, my uncle, he had a newly built house, he had a young family, he built a house in Handlova in 1943, he moved in there, and when he returned from evacuation in the summer of 1945, the house was already confiscated, so he was no longer the owner, he was already busy. He never got to his house again. Similarly, my mother's family had their house confiscated and occupied in this way. My father and mother also stayed in Handlova after 1946, but no longer in their own houses, but in apartments owned by others. And they were allocated these houses after the Germans, and later they could buy them back in the 1950s. There were quite bizarre situations, I also know people who were also lucky that when they returned from evacuation after the end of the war, they could return to their house, it was not occupied, but it was confiscated, so they lost the ownership of their house and then in In the 1950s, they had to buy their own house. So many of these Germans felt it was wrong. The uncle, that one, he was never involved in politics, he was a miner, he lost the house he built with bloodshed and then when the opportunity came, when it was released in the late 1960s, he moved with his family to the Ruhr, where his sons earned money in the mines there work."
Ondrej Pöss was born into a family of Carpathian Germans in 1950, when a large part of his relatives had already left the territory of Slovakia due to the evacuation of Carpathian Germans. Several people lost their property based on Beneš’s decrees. Shortly after his birth, his father, a miner, died, and hard times came for the family, which could not rely on the help of relatives. Although his ancestors founded the village of Handlová in the 14th century, Ondrej remained alone on the threshold of adulthood. He studied mathematics and physics and later began to study the history of exact sciences in Slovakia at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. After the Velvet revolution, he founded the Museum of the Culture of the Carpathian Germans in Slovakia and the Carpathian German Association, of which he is the chairman (2003 - 2008 and since 2013).
Unveiling of a memorial plaque to the Carpathian Germans who were forced to leave Slovakia between 1944 and 1947. Ondrej Pöss in the middle. Year 2006.
Unveiling of a memorial plaque to the Carpathian Germans who were forced to leave Slovakia between 1944 and 1947. Ondrej Pöss in the middle. Year 2006.
In 2019, Ondrej Pöss became an honorary citizen of the city of Handlová. They evaluated his work in the field of culture and his personal contribution to activities beneficial to the coexistence of all residents, regardless of nationality and religion. Pictured with mayor Silvia Grúberová.
In 2019, Ondrej Pöss became an honorary citizen of the city of Handlová. They evaluated his work in the field of culture and his personal contribution to activities beneficial to the coexistence of all residents, regardless of nationality and religion. Pictured with mayor Silvia Grúberová.
