”I will wear this for the rest of my life"– The story of a Danube Swabian woman
She uttered her thoughts in almost a single breath with words carried through long nights. At that time, I had already visited the thousand-faced Vojvodina for the umpteenth time, where at first I only took photos in Hungarian villages, but I soon realized that being a Hungarian in Vojvodina does not only mean living your life in a foreign country, Serbia.
Vojvodina's ethnic diversity is truly unique. On the map you can find the names of the villages in Hungarian or Serbian, but it would be a mistake to think that only these two peoples live in this region.
After all, Sokac, Bunjevac, Ruthenians, Szeklers, and Slovaks live here. Several settlements are like a micro-world.
The reason for this was that during the Turkish occupation, the region was depopulated, followed by a strong wave of resettlement in the 18th century. Many families came to the area at this time in search of a better life.
Szelencse, or Bácsújfalu (Selenča in Slovak), is a Slovakian village where half the village is Lutheran and the other half Catholic. This difference literally divides the village in half, and to this day it does indeed make a difference where you live. I met Aunt Anna in front of the Catholic church.
"I am of Danubian Swabian origin, my name is Joha Anna, I was born in Vojvodina, in Bački Gračaco (German: Filipowa, Hungarian: Szentfülöp) in 1940. My parents were executed, my father at the beginning of the war and my mother later in the camp. There is no grave for my mother because they were just thrown away. My mother's name was Anna, like mine, and my father was Stephan. I have only one photograph of my parents, which I got from a related nun. When I was four and a half years old, I was taken in by a poor couple in Szelencse, but I don't really know why. All I know is that a relative of mine took me to a farm, but they couldn't keep me there either, because there was no food, mostly just cornmeal. When I arrived in Szelencse I was very weak and thin.
The financial situation in the new family was not good either, because the country was ruined, everything was taken away from the people, they even went into our pantries, took the meat and the pigs from the stalls, and even the horses were driven away from many places.
At first, I could only speak German, when I came to Szelencse, the children laughed at me in the street. Now I've forgotten it completely. I finally got married here in Szelencse, my husband was a year younger than me. I took a liking to the Slovak attire here, for my foster parents began to dress me in it as soon as I arrived here, albeit very skimpily. When I became a grown girl I started buying the materials for sewing my own dress. I will wear it for the rest of my life. Everyone here accepts me, but even after seventy-eight years, I am still called Švabica (Danubian Swabian woman) in the village, and I have no problem with that."
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