43rd National Táncház Festival & Fair • 5–7 April 2024
Issue:
Starting page: 36
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Grozdits Károly is a contributor and editor of folkMAGazin. He writes here about his own family: his grandfather’s story. His family was from "Felvidék" or Upper Hungary, meaning Hungarian communities in today’s Slovakia. He is on the trail of some unexplained family history. His grandfather Grozdits Gyula had been head gardener (a respected position) on the Semsey Estate in the town of Semse/Šemša (near the city of Kassa/Kosice, Eastern Slovakia). As a soldier during WWII he was taken prisoner and held in a prison camp near Szeged in Hungary. After the war he did not return to Semse to join his family. Grozdits Gyula hung himself on the day his grandson Károly was born, but no one told Károly about this until he was in his twenties. Of course he was curious: Why? Recently Károly found reports from 1943 newspapers about a suspicious hunting accident in Semse, wherein his grandfather accidently shot another hunter.