A History of Central Eastern Europe

The monastery was severely damaged in a 1907 fire and again during the Second World
War which was followed by 2 decades of slow decay. That process has been halted and
is slowly being reversed with the grounds housing a museum since 1966 with
ethnographic, pharmaceutical and historical collections. 18
In the first half of the 19 th c the majority of the population made their living from
agriculture and the HORVATH family predominated. A MIHALY HORVATH (1809 – 1878)
was a minister and historian of note but no more information has been found. It is from
this time that I have solid information that Nana’s family, the KUTARÑA’s, were in
SPIŠSKÁ STARÁ VES. After the revolution of 1848 ‐ 1849 a new geopolitical district was
formed called SPIŠSKÁ MAGURSKÁ; its seat was SPIŠSKÁ STARÁ VES. It had 33
municipalities in the district. The most prominent Hungarian family at this time was the
elusive SALAMON family. Other than a passing notation of a noted historian named
FERENC SALAMON (1825 – 1892) nothing else has been found. Nana’s father, JOZSEF JÁN
KUTARÑA set out for the United States in 1886 and her mother followed the next year.
THE EFFECTS OF WAR ON SLOVAKIA
In 1918 the Polish Army invaded the village twice. Many Slovaks fled to Russia rather
than serve in the Hungarian Army. Their numbers were so great that the 1 st Czecho-Slovak
Army Corps, numbering some 100,000, was made part of the Russian military. At the peace
conference on 28 July 1920 it was decided that 13 districts containing 25 villages with
22,523 Slovaks from the UPPER SZEPES and ORAVA regions would become Polish; SPIŠSKÁ
MAGURSKÁ became the smallest district in SLOVAKIA. The 10 th point of PRESIDENT
WOODROW WILSON’s 14 Points called for the federalization of Austro-Hungary with broad
autonomous rights for its nations which ended with the formation of several new countries
including CZECHOSLOVAKIA.
Through the interwar years the country tried to stabilze itself internally and protect
its borders; all-the-while the power of the Third Reich was an ominous specter growing on
the western horizon. In March 1939, the declaration of SLOVAK autonomy within
CZECHOSLOVAKIA prevented it from being occupied by the military of Nazi GERMANY the
following day. Six months later SLOVAKIA declared full “independence” as a GERMAN
puppet state under PRESIDENT JOZEF TISO. A border war erupted between HUNGARY and
SLOVAKIA immediately after the declaration and the short dust up saw the loss of 1
Hungarian Air Force plane; it was shot down by another Hungarian Air Force pilot who
thought it was an enemy aircraft! SLOVAKIA became the 1 st state to suspend the deportation
of Jews (25 March 1942) once it learned of the mass murders being done at the camps;
however it was resumed when the government collapsed 2 years later. On 27 August 1944
Slovak Nationalists “liquidated” a small unit of the Nazi SS in RUŽOMBEROCK and 32 more
German officers were executed in MARTIN the following day. On the 29 th of August,
LIEUTENANT COLONEL JÁN GOLIAN, commander of the Slovak underground military
forces in BANSKÁ BYSTRICA, gave the code-word for the armed insurrection against
GERMANY to begin just as the first units of the German military crossed the borders. On
September 1 st the SLOVAK NATIONAL COUNCIL issued the declaration that formally ended
TISO’S puppet government and re-established CZECHO-SLOVAKIA. A week later a Soviet
54