Mgr. Jarmila Vaňová

For example, it was not appropriate to speak Romani in public. And many Roma families have actually lost their language through strong assimilation and coercion, and they can no longer speak it. Paradoxically, at locations, where the communities were isolated and where the languages was cultivated "at home" and the Roma community was bigger, the language remained "purer". You will find in it really few "borrowed words" or other words, for example, taken from Slovak. Because Romani is not such that if you walk down the street and every other word is Slovak, everyone will understand it, this is not Romani. But the great damage to our language, of course, we were not allowed to cultivate our own culture. All our quasi-good musicians mostly played Slovak folklore. Of course also the Roma one, but that was already within the scope of other possibilities and other activities. So even at that time, during socialism, I did not perceive that we were being treated unfairly. Of course, we knew who we are, what we are, and we cultivated our Roma identity... They actually locked it up for us in our homes, in our settlements, in our apartments. And you either accepted it or you wanted to adapt. We accepted it and basically lived our lives as if in such collaboration with everyone else, where we didn't make it very public that we were who we were, but when we were together, it was clear that it worked.

My aunt said they were Russians, so if they're Russians, it's okay. It won't be bad. But then my mother came from work, she repeated it to us several times, when this time was mentioned. So she said that there was a shooting in Košice. And both my parents worked in Košice. And then I guess the Slovan hotel was built. That's what today's Hilton was called then. And she said there were a lot of bricks and stuff ready. And that when they started firing from machine guns, everyone lay behind them. Mom came with her knees bruised because they were at the centre of it. And they were scared and it was a very powerful experience for them because they hadn't encountered anything like that before. Dad was (there)also, they were together. And he said that something big was happening in Košice, because of the shooting. In the villages, some people, as far as I know, in our locality there was strong resistance against these troops. And for a very long time, posters with the words "freedom" were hanging from the huge shopping centre. And they kept re-painting it, but it was still visible. So I remember as a child the word freedom was still legible there and we perceived it.