The representatives of the political organisations and organisations of pedagogues of Hungarians in Ukraine and in Slovakia, and the representatives of the Governments of Hungary and Slovakia attended the new school year opening ceremony, including an Ecumenical worship service, held in the municipality sitting right on the Slovak-Ukrainian border.
Tibor Jókai, President of the Hungarian Pedagogues Association of Slovakia, began his speech by recalling that, in 1946, the Soviet- Czechoslovak border cut the formerly united Szelmenc belonging to Hungary between 1938 and 1944 in two. The greater part of the village belonged to Czechoslovakia, and the smaller part — Mali Selmenci — went to the Soviet Union.
The two parts of the village were initially divided by a wood plank fence, then a barbed wire fence was raised in the middle of Szelmenc, which remained until 2005. A border-crossing point between the divided parts of the village — symbolised by a wooden Szekler-gate cut in half: the parts of which were erected on each side of the border — was opened that year.
Ildikó Orosz, President of the Hungarian Pedagogues Association of Ukraine, stressed in her speech that politics has built walls between people in a drastic way in Szelmenc; the people of the region has become the pawn of major powers after the Second World War.
(MTI, 4 Sept 2017)
Minority Report / Bulletin on the Hungarian Community in Slovakia
