Our researcher Karina Hoření was invited by the Písek Municipal Library to share her thoughts on the 2021 documentary “Jak jsem se stala partyzánkou” (“How I Became a Partisan”). The film, made by Vera Lacková, tells the story of her great-grandfather, Ján Lacko, who joined the antifascist resistance during the Slovak National Uprising in 1944. It explores not only his experiences during the war, but also how his story is remembered by the women in her Romani family, as well as the ongoing presence of anti-Romani prejudice in Slovakia today. Karina contributed insights from her own field research in central Slovakia, the same area where Vera’s family once lived. In this region, Romani, German, and Slovak partisans, along with members of the pro-Nazi home guards, all operated in ethnically mixed villages, and the memory of these events still shapes personal relations of people nowadays.
