"Well, maybe I would have moved so closer to the end of the Second World War and I would have asked the events related to the Slovak National Uprising if they somehow touched the Čeklís or how you perceived that this Slovak National Uprising was taking place.
Two men got into the uprising because they were private soldiers, but it just got to us that they took part in the insurgents ... but otherwise we didn't know, it was far from us.
But it was not even talked about?
No, there we did not talk. Later, when foreigners came ... but not foreigners, but people from Slovakia, from the middle, moved to Bratislava. That's how they made claims. We took part in the uprising and we have a leading position in the management of the village. That's it. We already knew then that he was a partisan.
And so there were probably no partisans from the village of Čeklís.
Not. No, just the two of them. They also returned.
So maybe I would have moved a bit too, basically towards the end of the war. Bratislava was bombed and actually the Čeklís is close by. So do you remember these events? Whether, for example, it was either heard in such remote villages or as you remember this period.
So, at the forty-fourth for the Christmas holidays, we were notified. The girls will not return after the new year. Everyone who lives in the village will be arranged by the school principal and you will report there. That's it… But by then the forty-third and fourth, it was ... We didn't know when we went to school in the morning... if we would return in the afternoon. Because we were very close to Vajnory ... and the founding station, there at that founding station, there were sometimes ten sets of freight trains that went ... they were german freight trains. And they went towards Nové Zámky, down ... for german soldiers. So there were heavy raids daily. They bombed "Dynamitka" in Bratislava, right next to the station. Then there was a big factory, here on a winter ... on a winter Danube cruise. So there were also big raids. Well, we didn't ... they didn't bomb the school here on Dunajská street, it worked out, but Cvernovka got it.
And during that bombing, you were in Bratislava or not.
Well, yes. Then ... at the end of the Danube station, there was a small, new station. So there we got off the train and straight to school. Just a moment, we were in school. So the children run quickly, those who go to Bernolákovo, Ivanka, Chorvátsky Grob, run and take the train and see if you go home now or in a few hours. So because of this, they finished it at Christmas. The children's attendance at school from the countryside.
And then you actually…
The school was arranged by the municipality. CHorvátsky Grob, Ivanka, Zálesie and Bernolákovo ... we had in a pub. ”
"But I would also ask if there were any guards in the village and if you have any experience with them.
They were, yes. When the Hungarians arrived in...left... for about two days, thirty Čeklís men appeared in the church, dressed in guard uniforms, in boots. They marched to the great mass at ten, to the church. But quietly it became an organization. It was run and organized by a businessman from Bernolákovo, but he came from Hlohovec. He was an immigrant ... he married a woman from Bernolákovo, he was named the most important person and he ... and the notary was subjected to him. Somehow they agreed, but the notary did not attend, he was not dressed in that uniform. Sometimes they also had some disagreements, but they were some minor ones. Also, that the children were to greet, we were to greet "On guard," but the notary at the meeting said that it is for politics, not for children. They may greet the good- day and they also may greet “the praised either the Lord Jesus Christ”. Because if we have a pastor for president, let them greet you, but don't ask the school children to say "On guard," that's for us, for adults. There were smaller things too.
So you didn't have to say “On guard”.
Yes, but the so-called commissioner ... We called the commissioner, so he has already caused a lot of unrest in the village because there were fifty, maybe fifty-five railway workers, families who would have built their houses… the railway guaranteed them. It was built...these family houses by the jew from Senec, Linkenberg. And it went to some savings who had, because the railway workers had good salaries, the other parts were guaranteed by the railway. Of those ... and they, when the Hungarians left, they had to… I say in quotes , had to. Fate forced them to leave, because they belonged to the railway administration of Nové Zámky and Štúrovo. And behind Bernolák's last three houses, it was already Hungary.
But actually also Nové Zámky and Štúrovo.
Yes, Yes. So these people ... the railway workers knew that they would not apply in Slovakia. There were also speech problems. They spoke slovak, but by the dialect from Záhorie, it's such hard slovak. They would not work as drivers on the state line as on express trains. So they went to Nové Zámky and Štúrovo, where they were assigned. Many of them found housing in a neighboring village, in Biel. So whoever had the opportunity, it was already ... it wasn't strictly on those borders in Bernolákovo. Sometimes they could come to their house because they took little furniture with them. They thought, but everyone, that it would be a short time again and they would return to their homes. Well, they didn't come back. They have not returned for six years. Well, Mutkovič, the commissioner. His name was Mutkovič. He took office. In these nice houses built, he divided them into twelve policemen, some with families. There were six border guards and six funding. So they moved them there. Well, it was sad. This offended the people very much, so he did not have a good name in Čeklís. Well, we had to suffer. For example. Our neighbor, across the road, was our neighbor. There was one six-room villa. The viticultural administrator from Esterházy's property built it, his name was Kvál. He lived there with his wife and they had one son. He studied in Budapest because the wife and Kvál were Hungarians. From there, in the year thirty-nine, their son went to Paris for the Sorbonne, to study international law. Old Kvál died and his wife in that great villa ... and this was a great chance for Mutkovič. She had a sister, she came from Senec and it was Hungary. So she had to go to Senec with the bag. They moved the furniture from those rooms into one room, and the twelve policemen used to live there. Yes. Well, the young Kvál didn't come out of Paris until forty-fifth. Well, he had it too. He joined the group that managed the move. That's how he grabbed it. Otherwise, he would have to go to Hungary with his mother, too. "
"Well, we were supposed to leave at forty-eight, but my father, a great party-man, arranged for us to stay. Well, it was quiet for two or three years, but because the Čeklís communists signed up that twenty people had to... so-called Hungarians ... they could be relocated, so my husband… Before coming from russian captivity, he got there as a seventeen-year-old student, man. They took them from Budapest, after the war, but he had to ... he returned to Slovakia, to Czechoslovakia because his mother and siblings lived in Senec. After the war, the border got back to Bratislava. So the Hungarians did not want him and sent him to Slovakia. Reslovakization has already ended, so he lived here for four years homeless as a homeless man, they did not want to recognize him. Every three months in Senec he had to report to the policemen, that he was. Well, it was a good opportunity to get rid of the Čeklís communists ... there were three of us already. And yet another, there was another family. The owner of a large mill and there were seventeen people. So they collected the twenty and they, the seventeen went in the year fifty-two, but we are not... because of the boy, that is, because of the child, that he was born later, but then we could not stay any further ... we had to. So I had him in my hands, he was ten months old and so we went. Three bags, and the direction ... we went to Most pri Komárne.
So I would follow up with the question that what was the ethnic composition of Čeklís, if you remember ... were there, for example, some Jewish fellow citizens?
They were not, but Slovaks and Hungarians.”
Irena Príkopská, later Macsiczová, was born on February 17, 1931 in Čeklís, from 1948 Bernolákovo. She comes from a large family with hungarian roots. The grandfather, Jakub Príkopský, was a mayor in the village for more than forty years. It is not only about the length of his activity, but especially that he was historically the first mayor of Čeklís at all. He and his first wife had eight children, one of whom was Irena‘s father Vojtech. He was a trained shoemaker and owned a large shoe workshop in Bratislava. Mother Mária was also born into a hungarian family, the Puter family. For a time she worked as a tailor, but later finished it. Maria and Vojtech had an only daughter, Irena. Irena and her mother lived with grandfather Jakub for fifteen years, whereas father Vojtech was still away because of work duties.
Irena initially attended a slovak school, which changed in 1942, when she entered the Hungarian Grammar School on Dunajská street in Bratislava. During the whole two years of 1943 and 1944, none of the students had any idea if they would be able to get home safely by train in the afternoon, and therefore at Christmas in 1944 their attendance was terminated and teaching took place in a municipal pub. After the war, the lives of ordinary people returned slowly to the old ways. Irena went to school in a local pub all autumn and winter, but then she finally returned to Bratislava. In 1947, she successfully completed the grammar school and was accepted to the Faculty of Law, where, however, she completed only three semesters and was fired. The regime was relentless. She settled in the municipal office, where she completed retraining and received a notarial education. She was engaged in marriages, registries, taxes, statistics and so on. Two years later, she married Ľudovít Macsicza, who came from Senec. He was of Hungarian descent and returned to Czechoslovakia some years later as a former russian captive. In 1956, their son Gašpar was born, with whom they were forced to emigrate to Hungary in 1957. They later settled in Budapest, where Ľudovít worked as a railroad worker and Irena as a payroll accountant. She attended evening school and later graduated in Hungary and spent two years at the Business Academy. Subsequently, she worked in a facility with Czechoslovak culture, which, however, did not last long as she exchanged jobs with another worker and ended up as a recorder and translator in the sales department for ten years. She was also right-handed to the new czech owner of the textile industry in Hungary, who did not speak the language of Hungary. The son was always a successful athlete, representing Hungary in pentathlon.
In the 1990s, she returned to Slovakia, where for a time she represented an employee at the municipal office and later worked as a court recorder. She currently lives in Bernolákovo.
