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Chalice in the Calvinist church of Szap. It was donated by my paternal great grand parents.

[Text reads: “N(emes) Bartalos Mariny hitvese

N(emes) Szabo Judith keszittette

Anno 1820

A Szapi R:Sz:Ekklak”]

Our Family in Szap/Sap

As far as anyone can recall our branch of the Bartalos family resided in the village of Szap . The village now is part of Slovakia and had been officially called Palkovicovo from about 1950 to 1998 and thereafter as Sap. I prefer the Hungarian name Szap as that is how I always heard it called when I was growing up. Szap is located southeast of Bratislava (Pozsony/Pressburg/Posonium) at the northern bank of the Danube river. This area became part of Czechoslovakia after Wold War One and had the same fate again in 1945. Now it is part of the more recently created Slovak Republic. It is located in the geographic area called Csallokoz in Hungarian (Zitny Ostrov in Slovak), in the County of Dunaszerdahely (Okres Dunajska Streda in Slovak), within the smaller geographic area referred to as Csilizkoz (Medzicilizie in Slovak).

I am the first person in centuries in my ancestral line not born in Szap. My father, Dr. Mihaly Bartalos, was born in Szap in 1902. He was one of six children and the only one who left the village, expected to become a protestant reformed (reformatus) i.e. Calvinist minister. Instead, he found his calling in medicine. The peace treaty of Trianon (signed on June 4, 1920), which followed the First World War, made the area of Csallokoz, among other areas inhabited predominantly by ethnic Hungarians, part of the newly created Czechoslovakia. My father studied medicine first in Budapest and as the annexation of his homeland to Czechoslovakia proved to be lasting he decided to rejoin his family there. He learned Slovak and in 1928 resumed his medical studies at the university in Bratislava. He received his medical degree from the Komensky University on January 26, 1934. Subsequently he specialized in Public Health and Epidemiology. He married in the same year and I, his first and only child, was born in 1935. At that time he worked as a physician at a local hospital. As the result of the "Vienna Award" of November 2, 1938 (variously referred to as Wiener Ausschuss, Becsi Dontes, Arbitrage de Vienne) parts of Southern Slovakia, which included the land of our ancestors, were given back to Hungary. This triggered a wave of last minute anti-Hungarian atrocities on the part of the Slovaks. During this campaign my father was forced to relinquish his position as public health physician in the city of Cadca and in 1939 we moved to Hungary.

In 1940 my father became a public health physician ("jarasi tiszti orvos" in Hungarian) in Edeleny, a county seat in a mixed industrial-agricultural area in north-east Hungary approximately 25 kilometers (about 16 miles) north of the city of Miskolc. I attended high school in Miskolc (1949-53), was accepted to the medical school ("Orvostudomanyi Egyetem") in Budapest in 1953, took part in the anticommunist Revolution and Freedom Fight in 1956, fled Hungary after the Soviet suppression of the Revolt and lived first in Nancy, France in a refugee camp than found refuge, support and opportunity to continue my studies in what was at that time West Germany. I enrolled with German scholarship support at the University of Heidelberg where I studied medicine, philosophy and psychology. I married in 1957, had my first child born in 1959 who was named Mihaly Arpad and, in 1960, obtained my Doctor of Medicine degree with honors. During this time the Communist Kadar regime in Hungary was busy opening the letters I sent home, dragging my aging mother periodically into the police station for questioning about my whereabouts.

In August of 1960 I immigrated to the United States with my wife and son "kis Miska." Since then I have been a resident, and now a citizen of the U.S.A. I have three children: the above mentioned Mihaly (Michael) who was born in 1959 in Heidelberg, Gabor (Gabriel) born 1965 in Baltimore, Maryland, and Gergely (Gregory) born 1968 in Washington, D.C. They all live in the United States. In 2000 my son Michael and his wife Lili Ong had a son, named Andre and in 2005 their second son Bruno was born.

My paternal uncle Arpad Bartalos had two sons, Arpad and Rezso; my uncle Balint also had two sons, Balint and David; and my aunt Janka had one daughter, Piroska Takacs. The year 1945 was disastrous for Central Europe as the hordes of the Soviet "Red Army"occupied and ravaged that part of the World. To make matters worse, Csallokoz, which was given back to Hungary in 1938, was made once again part of Czechoslovakia . Persecution of Hungarians, including deportations, forced labor camps and expulsions from Slovakia followed. The years 1945 proved disastrous for us too as it brought the death of six male members of the family. In that year my grand father (Mihaly Bartalos, Sr.), my father (Mihaly Bartalos, Jr.), my uncle Arpad Bartalos, Sr., his two sons Rezso and Arpad Jr. and my uncle Balint Bartalos, Sr., all died. During the subsequent years Balint, Jr., (born 1939) and David (born around 1941) moved away from Szap; to my knowledge David lives in Bratislava while Balint Jr. died in 1991 and is buried in Szap. David's son Roman lives in Jur pri Bratislava (Szent Gyorgy in Hungarian) in the vicinity of Bratislava . The only remaining person from the family who still resides in Szap is my cousin Piroska Takacs.

The name of my paternal grand father was Mihaly Bartalos (born 1873), his father was David Bartalos (born 1827, died in 1881), and his father was Marton Bartalos (born 1771, died 1858). The wife of this Marton, named Judit Szabo, was the donor of the chalice that is depicted above. It has been preserved by the local Calvinist church. Vital records indicate that they all were born and died in Szap. During my visit to Szap in the year 2000 they were all found with their wife buried in marked graves in the cemetery of Szap with the sole exception of David. The explanation for this puzzling fact might be that he was married twice. His first wife, Terez Vegh died in 1858 at the age of 28 leaving behind four children. David remarried and had five more children with his second wife, Maria Laszlo. It is possible that David predeceased his younger wife who decided to burry him in her home town of Padany (Padan in Slovak) where their marriage also took place. A visit to the Padany cemetery might provide the answer. In tracing our roots this is as far as the memory of our contemporaries and grave markers could take us in our search for our roots. The result of the subsequently initiated systematic search for earlier data is detailed in the section on Genealogy Research.

Among the current inhabitants of Szap (Sap) are Bela Bartalos, Jr., (born around 1951), his wife whose maiden name was Irma Bartalos (born around 1953), and their two children, Tamas (born in 1975), and Andrea, (born in 1978). Bela Bartalos’ father, Bela Bartalos, Sr., died in 1978. They all were born in Szap.

I was told some 30 years ago that the Bartalos family of Szap had relatives in Padany (Padan in Slovak) and that their names were Juszti Bartalos, Lajos Bartalos, Zsofia Bartalos, Kalman Bartalos and Katica Bartalos. They were believed to be descendents of one of the sons David Bartalos (1827-1881) Maria Laszlo of Padany/Padan had together.

We were able to trace back our ancestry to Ferenc Bartalos who lived in the late 1600s – early 1700s. He was the son of George Bartalos who in turn was the son of Gergely Bartalos-Bogyay. Gergely was a wealthy landowner with properties in several locations,including Nagymad, Varbogya, Szap, Dercsike, etc. His grandchildren, Ferenc and Istvan received land in Szap. We do not know the exact time when this Ferenc, our ancestor, moved to Szap but it was in the later part of the 17th century. One evidence of the presence of Ferenc Bartalos in Szap comes from a historical note preserved at the office of the Calvinist church of Szap detailing the history of that congregation. At one point it reports on a major fire that destroyed several buildings in the village in 1699, including the church and the parish office. The leader of the congregation at that time was school master Andras Gal who in 1700 left the village and gave the remnants of the church records to Ferencz Bartalos for safekeeping. This information is repeated on page 14 of an unpublished manuscript written by the wife of a former minister, the late Mrs. Bela Csekes and preserved at the office of the Calvinist parish in Szap. (English translation of the manuscript’s title is "Chronicle of the Calvinist Parish of Szap-Csiliznyarad." Chronicler: widow of Bela Csekes, 1968).

Ferenc Bartalos, however, was not the first Bartalos residing in Szap. A book edited by Lajos Gecsenyi, which reviews the proceedings of general meetings of the nobles and the legal proceedings in the County of Gyor ("Gyor varmegye nemesi kozgyulesi es torvenykezesi jegyzokonyveinek regesztai", Gyor, 1990) reference is made on pages 20, 37 and 41 to the noble Istvan Barthalos and his wife Agatha and to their manor house (in Hungarian: nemesi kuria) in the years 1582 and 1583 in Szap. This Istvan Barthalos was a relative whose line apparently died out.

A book with extensive commentaries on the history of the Bartalos family and its branches since 1655 has been written in Hungarian by the well known journalist Ferenc Vegh of the city of Gyor, Hungary. The book was published in 2001 with the financial assistance of Mihaly Bartalos, M.D. of New York City. The full title of the book in Hungarian is: "Nemesek faluja: Szap. Helytortenet- valamint a Bartalos csalad es a reformatus egyhaz tortenete." In English translation: "Szap: The Village of Nobles. Local history as well as the history of the Bartalos Family and the Calvinist Parish ." The book consists of 240 pages, contains references, numerous illustrations and photos, some in color. It can be purchased at the Office of the Mayor, 93006 Sap, Slovakia.

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