"Then they gathered the guys under the maple, putting them in line. Those who wore caps had their hair messed up in all sorts of ways, filming them as partisans. Then those who were from Rovné or Zliechov, saw in Bratislava in a journal, that it was in Stredná. So it was like this. Practically when they didn't find any more partisans here. But as they fired from this hill there and from there again. And so it happened that they shot one of their soldiers here. Of course they said the partisans shot him. "
0:23:51 - 0:24:38
"There was a company commander, they had phones in there. In our house, in that kitchen. They were probably some of the Sudeten Germans. They also knew Slovak, but they did not want to speak Slovak. But once my father found out because he once had a bag and we had something like that. And he asked my mother in Slovak, if this is not our bag. And the officer understood, 'Was? What? ‘He understood. He understood what he was asking. It was some kind of 'Hondrbolec', so they called them, these Germans. They were the worse ’Germans. And those 'better' ones were Austrians. The ones who went here. Even the one who brought them those lunches here. He brought a German newspaper for Easter and Hitler was in it. He started banging on the table, that what he did to them. And my father couldn't say that he was a crook. If he wasn't recording it on him, he preferred to be quiet. Those Austrians were angry at Hitler for dragging them into the war. "
0:37:55 – 0:39:36
"So it was October 20, 1944. I remember, it was quite cold, it was autumn. The days were short. The unit moved here at night or in the morning. They occupied this settlement. It's here in this pit. There is the road, there were soldiers in place. Then they were on those hills. They were there on that side too. At six o'clock in the morning, without any warning, they opened fire. They simply fired live ammunition. We, where this wooden house is, - my father was a soldier, so we had to get to the ground right away. And as they fired, the bullets hit as we lay, about half a meter above our feet. My father conducted us like that. We had a cat, it jumped to the ceiling. It was a rumble, machine guns and those incendiary bullets. This cottage was caught right away from those incendiary bullets, it was on fire. Then, when they shot it, they lunged - shouting, 'Halt! Komm! And I don't know what else. They drove people out, they had to go out. Then the people – the fire started - they had cattle here, so we drove it out. To at least save that. "
0:20:18 - 0:22:13
Albín Jankulík was born on August 12, 1935 in the mountain settlement Horná Stredná to Gašpar Jankulík and Eva, born Korbeľová. He had an older sister, Vilma. His father worked as a door-to-door salesman in Sudetenland, his mother was a housewife, taking care of the farm. As a little boy, Albín went to school in Košecko Rovno, Zliechov and Valaská Belá. During the Second World War, the settlement of Horná Stredná provided ideal conditions for hiding partisans. In the autumn of October 20, 1944, a Nazi commando of about 70 soldiers came to the settlement and set fire to the settlement. People were forbidden from extinguishing and the whole event was filmed on camera. They lined up the men and filmed them as caught partisans. They used the film as propaganda against partisans, even though they did not find any partisans in the settlement. Several houses and farm buildings in the settlement burned partially or completely. Some people had to move out of the settlement permanently. During Easter 1945, the settlement experienced a three-week shelling by German, Russian and Romanian soldiers. The German commander lived in the witness’ house. After the war, Albín left the settlement for school, completed his basic military service in Pilsen, graduated from university there and settled for 15 years. He also experienced the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops from East Germany. He moved to Zvolen, working as the head of the quarantine plant protection station, where he remained until his retirement in 2000. An active pensioner, a widower, currently spends time with his two daughters and three grandchildren. In 2018, he wrote a testimony about the event of the burning of the settlement.
