An Ordinary Pogrom
by Claude Cahn · 11/01/06
An Ordinary Card Game
The Romani settlement in Velyka Dobron is a flat lot, an open field surrounded by straw and mud cabins. The road approaches and turns right into the field. Between 400 and 500 Roma live here. Children instantly surround the car.
“It was a birthday,” a Romani man recalls of the night of the death. Roma are shouting and leading us around. “There was a party on the whole street. We were playing cards, Gypsies and Hungarians. We were drinking together and a fight began. They used their fists and we fought back. Then one of them took an iron bar and went to hit one of the Gypsies. The Gypsies managed to get the bar away from him and they hit him in the head. He died.”
Following the murder, the Roma fled and the Hungarians attacked. On the first night, they rioted through the Romani settlement, burning down three houses in the process. One Romani man stayed in the settlement:
“I was drunk. I was asleep in my house. I don’t know how many cars came but there were many. It was pure chaos all over. There were people in every house, there were people running all over with torches, shouting. Someone grabbed me, but then one of the Hungarians told them to let me go, because I am a good man. Later, the police chiefs came with the local judge, and the judge said that he would personally provide gasoline to burn down our houses.”
The following night, the mob returned and took away alarm clocks, television sets, radios, hot plates, bicycles, cameras, and videocassette recorders. They destroyed nine more houses. On both evenings, police from Velyka Dobron and Uzhorod were allegedly present and either could not or would not intervene to stop the destruction and looting.
According to Yuri Muchichko of the Uzhorod regional police department, the police were powerless to restrain the local Hungarians in their anger. “We could do nothing. Yes, a couple of houses were burned, but if we hadn’t been there, much more violence could have taken place.”
The Roma remained in the woods for between two and three months, although three of them turned themselves in for the murder of Alexander Dokus after three days. While they were in the woods, the Roma depended on charity from local villagers. Other villagers, who believed the Roma had got what they deserved, threatened the villagers who brought them food.
‘Then Some Houses Fell Down’
Three women are sitting in a row on a bench, dressed in black. Hungarians. They wear black shawls over their heads. J. becomes respectful and his vocabulary fills up with formalisms. One of the women is the sister of the victim. “Crazy drunk Gypsies started it all. I ran toward the place where it was happening and someone hit me with a stick. It broke my arm. One of them was walking around with an ax. Lots of people had to go to the hospital that night.”
One of the Hungarian women had called the police. But when they arrived, all the Roma had already run away. Alexander Dokus was taken to the hospital, where he died later that night. Dokus’s sister says his friends destroyed the homes. Nobody helps the Hungarians, she says, but everybody helps the Gypsies. There is, she tells us, a man from Holland who comes in a red car to bring the Gypsies presents. As we are talking to the women, Aladar drives by in his red Lada and the woman starts. Then she nods, recovering her ancient confidence and affirms quietly, “That’s him; that’s the man from Holland.”
Everyone reported that before the death there were never any problems, and relations were good. Judge Kalman Benedek, who had allegedly offered to provide gasoline to burn down the Romani settlement, also said that earlier, there had been no troubles. He was not sure who burned down the settlement in Velyka Dobron. It might have been the Hungarians, he said. But he also heard that it might have been Gypsies from other parts of Transcarpathia. There are, according to Judge Benedek, two kinds of Gypsies: “aristocrats and degenerates.”
Three Romani men were tried for their involvement in the night of Dokus’s murder, and all three were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms. Vassily Lakatos, 18, was sentenced to three years in prison for hooliganism and fighting. Zoltan Lakatos, 16, received a one-and-a-half-year sentence under the same charges. Vladimir Papp, 19, who was charged with the murder, was sentenced to seven years in prison. All of them are currently in jail. Judge Benedek could not remember what had happened to the Hungarians who had destroyed the Romani settlement.
Police Major Styepan Matitzo, an investigator for the Uzhorod regional police department, remembered clearly. “Four Gypsies were arrested and people from the village have been arrested. There were two investigations. Warrants for the arrests were issued by the regional prosecutor. There have been trials of both Hungarians and Gypsies, and people from both groups have been sent to prison, both for the murder and for the house burnings after it,” he said.
According to Matitzo, Uzhorod Regional Prosecutor Vladimir Lemak had been responsible for ensuring that justice was served in both cases. But according to Lemak, the investigation into the Hungarians who destroyed the Romani settlement had not yet reached his desk. “There has been an investigation into who, from the Hungarian side, is responsible for the destruction of the houses in Velyka Dobron, but nobody has been able to discover exactly who committed the crime. The case is still open, though; Major Styepan Matitzo is responsible for it.” Until they catch the guilty parties, Lemak explained, there could be no compensation. He hastened to add that, in Ukraine, any damage done “accidentally” would not be compensated for in any case.
Lemak also had a different explanation of what had happened. “The Gypsies stole something and the Hungarians found out. The Gypsies were in a majority, so they attacked a Hungarian and beat him. He died. Then the Hungarians attacked the Gypsies. They formed a group for revenge. The Gypsies recognized the threat and fled into the woods. Then some of the houses fell down. You’ve seen how strong those houses are; they collapsed. Gypsy dwellings are very weak. They are almost not fit to live in. The Gypsies did not come back for a long time. They spent about a month up in the woods. When they came back, some houses had been destroyed.”
