In first row: Capt. Jozsef
Bartalos and wife, Danszentmiklos,
Homecoming
2000
In August 2000 I visited
First stop was
In order to study vital data
removed from the village churches after World War II you need to register to
use the facilities of the Archives, pay a fee and request the needed microfilm
roles. You can view the films on microfilm viewers in the reading room and can
arrange to have copies made of the desired material for a reasonable fee. Gyula
took care of all these formalities prior to our arrival and thus we were able
to obtain and study microfilms without much ado. While I could not accomplish
all that I wanted, I become convinced that this material had been preserved and
is accessible. We left
The first village we visited
was Bodza, the former Varbogya or Bogya. To my disappointment repeated
questioning failed to locate any Bartalos in the
In Sokolce (once called Lak or
Lakszakallas) the first person I stopped on the street proved to be a Bartalos.
There I had no problem to find and to be received in a very friendly manner by
Bartaloses. This gentleman took us to his parents' house, where Mr. Vince
Bartalos and his wife received us most cordially. We tasted their food and in
the garden admired their grapes, pears, apples, beehives, pigs, chicken, and
other products of their productive and skilled hands. After changing cloth -
they were not expecting visitors - he came with us to the cemetery which
provided evidence for the long presence of Bartaloses in this village. I made
an effort to photograph every tomb marker bearing the name Bartalos.
Mr. Vince Bartalos took us to
the house of his niece Mrs. Czibor, nee Maria Bartalos. They too were very
friendly, asked us to sit down and offered us fruits and soft drinks. We
learned after a short discussion that Maria Bartalos has a sister, Gertrud, who
is a physician, and lives and practices medicine in
The landscape is dotted by
small villages often only a few miles separating them from each other. After
driving through Nagymegyer (Velky Meder in Slovak), Alistal (in Slovak Dolny
Stal), and Albar (in Slovak Dolny Bar), we arrived to the former Nagymad, now
called
Gyula Bartalos (right) from Nagymad, Pozsony vm.
during
At the firemen's competition I
had the pleasure of meeting the mayor of the village, Ms. Marta Nemeth. She
called my attention to a recently published Hungarian language booklet about
their village coauthored by her and mentioning Bartaloses therein (Nemeth, M.
and Petrovay, R.S.: Mad, Latnivalok, 2000). Since the book and postcard of the
village were offered for sale by young ladies at the competition I was able to
obtain copies without any difficulty. From this book I learned that the village
currently consists of 463 individuals (page 1), that it was called Nagymod in a
old documents and that it was also
referred to as Felmod and Kysmod and that it is mentioned in medieval documents
as royal property enjoying special privileges. The statement in the book that
since the 1700s the village has been referred to as Mad (page 2) needs
modification as does the statement that it was a royal property. In Pal
Palasthy's book entitled "A Palasthyak" in volume 2, page 85 there is
reference to a "Georgius Barthalos de Mad" from a document dated
1561. Thus the name Mad has been in use for at least since the 1500. - During
the mongol invasion in the 1200s several settlements in the area have
disappeared. In the late 1400s, the booklet stated - the village was often
visited by Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary and
The Catholic Church in Mad –the former Nagy Mad,
Pozsony vm., 2000
We also learn from the booklet
that Mad was known for a special kind of pocket knife, painted red and green,
and that the art of their creation was passed from father to son. A master
creator of the attractive "madi bicskak" (pocket knifes of Mad) was
Mr. Otto Bartalos (1927-1979) and also his son Mr. Istvan Bartalos (page 5).
Inside of the cemetery, close to the main entrance, is an impressive monument
of black marble erected through the initiative of mayor Mrs. Marta Nemeth. It
is inscribed in its entirety in Hungarian, dedicated to the "victims of
World War I and World War II”, “mercifully from the grateful citizens of Mad
1997". The booklet makes it clear (page 9) that all those listed here (22
for WW I and 9 for WW II) died a hero's death ("hosi halalt'), i.e. were
soldiers who died in action. Among those who died in World War I we find listed
Ferenc Bartalos and Lajos Bartalos as well as Gyula Bogyai, Kalman Bogyai and
Lajos Bogyai. No Bartalos or Bogyai is listed among those who are known to have
died from this village in military action in World War II.
In the cemetery we were joined
by the sister of Mr. Gyula Bartalos, Mrs. Iren Bartalos. Through her help we
were able to locate and photograph every grave marker with the name Bartalos on
it. Among the dead we found the grave of the father of Mr. Jozsef Bartalos, and
her maternal grandfather Gyula Bartalos, who is one of the two soldiers on the
photograph mentioned earlier. He was fortunate to return from the war alive.
His grave marker gives the years of his birth and death as 1887 - 1946.
After we left Mad we passed
through the villages of Padany (Padan), Csilizpatas (Patas), Csilizradvany
(Cilizska Radvan) and Balony (Balon) before reaching Szap or Sap.
A visit to Sap (Szap), where my
father was born almost a century ago (in 1902), provided experiences similar to
that of Lakszakallas in terms of friendly reception and, like in Mad, in Sap
too there was a celebration. An ox was roasting over an open fire in the middle
of the village where there stood a Kopjafa, a Transylvanian Hungarian carved
wooden column, and a loudspeaker was treating the assembled crowd to American
music (yes, to rock-and-roll, regae, etc.) while people conversed in Hungarian.
As I learned, it was a yearly celebrated harvest festival. When I pulled over
in my car which had a German license plate (we rented it at the
In these villages the average
person is unaware of his or her family's history, but many remember stories
about long-dead ancestors who had "a lot of land" but they are either
unable or unwilling to provide exact data. Those who live in larger houses are
professionals and/or own a business while the farmers, which includes most inhabitants,
are financially less well off. In each of these villages people talk of
separate Bartalos families with whom they intermarry. It is common to meet
people or to see grave markers where both husband and wife had the last name
Bartalos. Origin from an other village or difference in religion is cited as
proof of no relationship.
While marriages between
Protestant and Catholic Bartaloses do occur, they do not seem to be common.
Another expression of the long division and probably old animosity between the
Catholic and Protestant Bartaloses was the hesitancy on the part of my guides
in the cemeteries to direct me to the area where Bartaloses buried were of
different religion than our guide. The old wounds inflicted during the forceful
conversion of protestants back to Catholicism by Habsburg rulers in the second
half of the 17th century, take a long time to heal. I have to state in all
fairness that I was never asked for my religion and was received most cordially
in all villages. At every village I visited everybody spoke Hungarian.
Saddening were however stories about insults and discrimination suffered by
their children or grand children who went for advanced studies to
While in other parts of Hungary
the Bartalos name is rare, (I did not meet a single Bartalos while growing up
in Hungary and attending high school and medical school) in the Csallokoz, in
some villages half of the inhabitants are called Bartalos and still many others
have the name Bogyay. I hope that I will have the chance to return to the land
of these fine people to visit more of their villages and to talk to more of
them, expecting thereby to learn more about them and myself too.