posted 3 March 2001

updated 19 October 2002 Fran visits the long-lost relatives in Slovakia for the first time! Story below!

In June 2000,  word spread among internet users working on their Slovak-American family trees that the telephone directory for present-day Slovakia had become searchable on the 'net at WWW.ZOZNAMST.SK .  One enthusiast taught others among the genealogy buffs how to use it:

"Nothing to the Slovak Phone book. Go on the zoznam page.  Click on the BYTOVE STANICE, there type a last name. . .in the PRIEZVISKO;

type a name of the town in the MESTO, click on VYHLADAT.  When the names come up, click on the name in the BLUE that you want the address. "

But when Fran heard this, she was slow to pursue the connection it might make possible.  Her family had no knowledge of any living Kardos relatives in Slovakia, and even if she found one, she did not read or write Slovak ,to speak of.  An American relative visiting another ancestral village had been frustrated to find that not many Slovak residents knew English.  How could Fran communicate with the person, if she DID find a Kardos relative?

One evening not long after hearing about the site, Fran and her cousin Bea saw one another online.  Fran told Bea, "I do see a Kardos in Kristy, in the listings, right in the village our ancestors came from... but, suppose I were to write a letter of introduction, to contact the family?  I'll bet we'd have a language barrier."

"I met a Slovak citizen online who did some translating of that sort for me," Bea replied.  "Send an e-mail, explain that you are my cousin, and I am sure you can have some help, too."

So Fran did ask for help, and drafted a letter of introduction in English to Jan (Mr. John) Kardos of Kristy, Slovakia, whom she had found in the listings. Bea's acquaintance translated it and sent the Slovak version to Fran by e-mail.  Fran then wrote up a copy, diacritic marks, unfamiliar words and all, and sent it to pán (Mr.) Kardos, not at all sure who he was or whether he would welcome hearing from her.  Still, it did seem that he HAD to be some relation, since he lived in the very same, quite small village from which her grandfather had come, and he had the same surname, not so common in that part of Slovakia, just an afternoon's bicycle ride from the Ukraine border, and not so far from Hungary.

                                                              map courtesy of http://www.graphicmaps.com/webimage/countrys/europe/sk.htm

In Fran's letter, sent in late August 2000, she explained her interest in the family tree, and that she believed the Kardos family in Kristy would be related to her grandfather.  She gave names and dates from her knowledge of the Kardos-Bihary family history, and explained enough of what she knew about the family tree to try to enable the recipient of the letter to determine whether there were a relationship.  She mentioned family lore and sent photographs which might jog Mr. Kardos' memory.  Did the story of a branch of the Kardos family which had emigrated to Canada, and perhaps later returned to Slovakia, sound familiar to him?  Were they his relatives?  Did they include the man shown with Fran's grandfather in the photos she was enclosing, a man whom the older relatives had told her had visited her grandfather's household in Pennsylvania on a couple of occasions years ago, perhaps in the 1930s or 1940s? Judging from the photo, Fran guessed that the visitor would have been born about 1900.  

That man was shown in various photos, labeled in the handwriting of different U.S. Kardos family members over the years, as "John Kardos      Czech" and "John Kardos     Canada".  On the back of one photo-postcard of the man, the name of a photographer's studio in Fort William, Ontario, Canada, was given.  Fran enclosed pictures of her immediate family, and of her grandfather and grandmother.  Fran's aunt told her that she believed the visitor in the photos to be the cousin of Fran's grandfather George Kardos.

September 22, 2000 was to be a day Fran would never forget, a day for which she had worked for over thirteen years.  When she opened the mailbox, there was a reply from pan (Mr.) Kardos!

an excerpt from pan Kardos' letter

Right away, Fran went to the public library for Slovak-English translating dictionaries and Slovak-language textbooks to help her translate the letter.  Yes! Yes! Pán Kardos recognized the photographs.  The man who had visited was indeed Grandpa's cousin . . .as well as pan Kardos' late father! Yes, he was born in 1903.  And yes, that man had lived in Canada, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, near Fort William, and later emigrated back to his homeland.  Pan Kardos gave Fran new details about this long-lost branch of the family. Neither he nor Fran knew quite why contact between these branches of the family was apparently lost in the early 1950s.  

Further proof that they were indeed related was shown in the photos pan Kardos sent to Fran.  "Perhaps these are some of your relatives," he theorized. And sure enough, just as Fran possessed photos of people who were "probably some Kardos relatives of ours", so did he . . .Fran's eye lit on photos of her own father as a boy in his teens, shown with his siblings, and of her aunt's wedding in Washington D.C. in 1951, most likely sent by her grandparents to the cousins "in the old country" !  . . .photos of her own father which had been carefully kept by a senior-citizen cousin 6000 miles away, a man not sure who the photos depicted, wondering if he might ever hear from his relatives who had sent the photos, some day.

Fran read on, and turned to the dictionary and the textbook very often; she knew practically no Slovak.  Pan Kardos, in giving the date of birth for his grandfather, put Fran on the path of piecing together the fact that the photo she owned, labeled "Jan Kardos 1873-1910", was of this same man, who was the father of the man who had visited Fran's grandfather.  Pan Kardos continued

Fran had understood. . .misunderstood. . .that the Jan Kardos who was born in 1873, had died in Ohio in 1910....Pan Kardos explained that 1910 was not a date of death, but rather, the date the photo was taken. And yet, Fran recognized the word "zomrel", meaning "died"... she turned to the textbook's glossary over and over, and felt horror and sympathy as she read on, and made as much as she could of the letter, with her meager skills at reading Slovak.  "Vojne" was "war". . . "roku 1944" meant "in the year 1944". . . "aj moja [jedina] sestra Anna vo veku 16 rokov". . ."zahynuli pri vybuchu granatu". . . her older cousin related the sad story: his only sister, then age 16, and their grandfather, the Jan Kardos of the 1910 photograph, had been killed in their own town in Slovakia in WWII in a grenade blast, when they tried to seek shelter in a bunker.

Fran electronically scanned pan Kardos' letter, and e-mailed the scan to the helpful translator in Slovakia.  She soon received a full and accurate translation, thanks to the skill and generous efforts of Bea's bilingual acquaintance.  A dream had come true for Fran, and she was gladdened to hear that.....

What did she discover?  Well, when genealogy enthusiasts such as Fran write letters to "strangers", hoping to find long-lost family, they hope they will hear from the recipient of the letter, and that he or she won't feel that the letter writer is prying or bothersome.  Fortunately, pan Kardos said that he was pleasantly astounded to receive Fran's letter and the photo of his own father.  He was moved, and for some time could not fathom that indeed, he still had living relatives in the U.S.A who had been able to find him, people he had only known of from family stories.  He was happy to hear from Fran, and hoped that she would write again.

Feeling happy, she did write back, with the help of her interpreter-friend online in Slovakia, sending more photos and family stories, and pan Kardos did the same. He confirmed that the photo on the right below, which Fran had been given by her aunt, shows himself as a boy, with his sister, mother and father. . . and that that photo had been made by splicing a photo of his father, then working in Canada, to one of his wife and children back in the homeland, then making a print of the joined photos, to "reunite" their family, separated at the time by circumstances but not in their hearts. . .Fran was fascinated. . .as well as saddened, to realize that the serious young girl in the photo was to lose her life not so many years after the photo was taken. . .and that her own correspondent was now a man age 70, widowed, retired, and enjoying life in the household of the eldest of his three daughters, her husband, and their two teenagers, living even today in the small town in which her own grandfather was born in 1891, and from which he had come wiith his parents to Pennsylvania about age 4.

                           Observe how a copy of the photo at the left was doctored to produce the "reunion" on the right

                                                          Jan's late wife Emilia, and Jan, 1999

                                                            The fathers of the three men shown immediately above and below were first cousins

                                 Fran's beloved late Dad, at left; her uncle, Rev. Blase Kardos, at right, brother of her dad, alive and well today in New York at age 85

Fran shared the news of the "reunion" with her own family and relatives, and with fellow online Slovak-American family tree seekers.  Her aunt looked at pan Kardos' photo, and she and Fran agreed that he bears some resemblance to Fran's father and uncle.  

Fran (right) and pan Kardos and his family have continued their communication, adding e-mail to their modalities when his daughter Milka got internet access, and they all met in eastern Slovakia when Fran traveled there in September 2002 -- a long-held dream-come-true! Her cousin Bea is visiting the family in Slovakia in October 2002.
	Planning the trip -- summer 2002

Yet one more happy turn of events has come about for those involved.  In March 2001, Fran was able to locate and "e-reunite" the young translator, a Slovak citizen and resident, and the descendants of a greatuncle in that family who emigrated from Slovakia to Chicago, Illinois, USA about the 1910s, people whose branch had fallen out of touch with these relatives in Slovakia for many years as well.  Like the branches of the Kardos family on opposite sides of the Atlantic, this far-flung family was also glad to find one another again, and to view with awe the photos of one another's immediate family which had been kept safe across many years and many miles.

A man from their Chicago-branch e-mailed this scan of a photo he owned to Fran, one from about the mid-1960s; when she forwarded it to the translator,  a probable relative of the Illinois man, the reply came by e-mail from Slovakia: why, he has a photo, taken here in the homeland, of my closest relatives! This is my own father, my paternal grandmother and grandfather, my aunt whom they had late in life, and my uncle!

The second cousins meet for the first time

Above: In December 2002, we were able to facilitate a connection vice versa, locating the cousins (residing in the U.S.) of a friend in Slovakia, after those branches of their family had been out of touch for about 50 years!

Autumn 2002 update: My long-awaited trip to Slovakia!

I went to Europe Sep. 1 - 9, 2002, meeting friends and long-lost family in Slovakia.

My grandfather's family was from the easternmost part of the country.  I had found the branch still living

the ancestral village of Kristy almost exactly two years before. This small town is a bit s.e. of Michalovce,

near the Ukraine border. I knew Grandpa's people were from that area, but was not sure what town until a distant,

previously unknown cousin in FL helped me find our common family on the LDS films in 1998.

We are not sure how the branches of the family lost touch; I suppose that Cousin Jan's and my dad's

being busy young dads and workers in the early 1950s, their never having met, and their each knowing little

of one another's language, as well as Communist repression of the mail, etc., led to this falling out of

contact.

Online communication and snail mail with photos let the individual who translated for us and Jan's family

and me get pretty well acquainted and get to like one another. We all began to wish we could meet,

and this spring, we decided to make it come true.

We all planned that I would go there for a few days this summer. I saved up, and our translator pal

who travels extensively for business), someone with travel savvy and connections, got me an incredibly

affordable flight . I traveled from Syracuse to Boston to London to Vienna, where they would pick me

up. The smaller airports within Slovakia itself do not receive international flights.

I spent the first day (Sep. 2-3) with this first translator and family. We began by having coffee at a restaurant

on a tower in Bratislava high above the Danube, with a view of the Slovak Parliament building. I stayed at a

motel in their town of Povazska Bystrica (PB), in northwest central Slovakia, not far west of Martin,

a bit northeast of Trencin.  Both husband and wife, and boys 13 and 10, were delightful and gracious.  

It is very reassuring to be assisted by bilingual friends on one's first trip to a foreign country.

Us at Maria's: Fran, Maria, and her sons

We drove to eastern Slovakia on the 3rd to meet my cousins. We made only brief stops for lunch and such,

because I wanted to be with the people more than to "see all the sights". We viewed the High Tatras (mountains) and

ruins of old castles and walled towns as we drove by; the countryside is lovely.  Aside from the Tatras, and the paucity

of suburban areas as we know them, the climate and terrain and flora and fauna were a lot like that here in

central NY state or in Vermont. They have fewer multi-lane highways, but decently paved roads between towns.

We had a nice homemade meal when we got to the home of Emilia ("Milka") Kardosova Vojnova, my third cousin

on our dads' side, and her husband Jozef and daughters Adele, 14, and Emilia, 12, then my first translator headed back

west toward home for four days.

Emilia, Adelka, Jozef, Milka, and Fran

I stayed with these cousins in their town of Petrovce nad Laborcom ( = Petrovce, "below" the Laborec River), near the

Slovak-Ukraine border, and their college-aged neighbor, a great gal and cousin of Jozef's named Lenka, spent a lot of time

with us to translate. Her English is fairly good, too, and she was very poised and willing to help.

Lenka and Cousin Jan

During my time in eastern Slovakia, we visited in Kristy with pan (Mr.) Jan Kardos and his daughter Anna (9 days my senior),

er husband Miroslav, and their kids Andrea, 20, and Miroslav, 18 (a few days older than my oldest son!). Miroslav Sr works in

a tile factory, and he, Anna and pan Kardos are the main workers on what is, to me, a good sized family farm, with a few acres

at their home, and a few more across town. I was impressed by the predominance of homemade, simple but fresh and healthful

food I was served all week. The relatives and friends often served cold cuts and fresh tomatoes and raw pepper strips, nice bread,

homemade soup with vegetables and meat from their own gardens/livestock, the Slovak national dish of "bryndzové halusky"

(potato-meal noodles with a special light cheese sauce, sprinkled with bacon), and more wine, mineral water, and that strong

plum brandy one hears about, slivovica (which reminded me a little of Southern Comfort), in

one week than I have indulged in, in years.

Michal Ontolcik, a retired policeman, right, came from his home in Czech Republic to help his brother in law

Jan Kardos with the potato harvest, and allowed Fran to lend a hand

Pan Kardos and 10 middle-aged and older relatives and friends harvested their potatoes while I was there -- about 10,000 pounds

in one day! -- mainly for their own use.  His household has two beef bulls, one beef calf, a few pigs, several chickens, several rabbits,

and a good-sized garden including tomatoes, peppers, corn, raspberries, pole beans, a few varieties of grapes, turnips, and apple

and pear trees.

They introduced me to some relatives I hadn't known before, including some delightful senior citizens. One woman over 80 years old

gets her shopping done by loading tote bags onto her bicycle handlebars and walking her bike home from the shop.  I am inspired to see

people like Aunt Borka (see photo on my home page) who remain fit and active into their later years. She has had a stroke since my

return, and I ask the reader's prayers for her recovery.  Another cousin, 81 years old, animatedly told us about his WWII experiences,

and showed me photos he had of my dad's childhood family, recalling how they had helped him with "care packages" sent from

America "in the old days", containing money and clothes. On his patio, this "Jan M." had loomed rag rugs just like Grandpa

had made in Taylor, PA, for his family's use in the mid-1900s.  Many of the people live VERY simply, and for a country with high

educational standards, they are struggling with over 20% unemployment.

I hadn't wanted to see museums and such, as much as I sought to see family and family-history-related sights, and that is what we did.

I brought the relatives some photos and patriotic-themed U.S.A.-motif gifts, as well as other small items, including (the Slovak

embassy told me it was okay) raspberry canes from my yard, propagated from my dad's stock in CT, and before that, at my

Grandfather Kardos' place in PA -- brought, for the newly-found members of my family tree, some family plants, so to speak.

I agreed with the relatives' comments, made as we looked at photos of the deceased family members, that pan (Mr.) Kardos

looks more like my dad and Dad's older brother than he looked like his own dad! He likes the precise sort of shirts and eyeglasses

that my dad did, and certainly looks like a relative, with his deeply tanned skin, similar facial features, and fine straight white hair.

You can see Jan's resemblance to his second cousins, Fran's dad and uncle, pictured earlier on this web page

It was Milka and Lenka who spent the most time with me on the 4th through the morning of the 7th. We visited Milka's other sister

Jana and her husband and two kids. We spent quite a lot of time at a couple of "family" churches and cemeteries, as well as the

town hall of Petrovce, where Lenka's dad, Gustav Pcolinsky is mayor, and the nice convenience store in the same building --

proprietors, Milka and Jozef themselves -- where two clerks are employed .

As present day Slovaks go, I take it Milka and Jozef are quite financially well off, and their stucco two-story home is just beautiful,

large (I will guess 3000 sq. feet), and rich in hardwood flooring and trim, quality wooden furniture, and collected porcelain

pieces, as well as comforting-to-see religious items and art. Milka actually has a copy of the very same painting of Jesus

looking over Jerusalem at night which my grandparents had in PA.

We visited "family" churches and cemeteries both Calvinist and Roman Catholic, as that branch of our family includes both of

these denominations. Milka and Jozef told me about their trip to Medjugorge a few years ago. She and I stopped over to the

parsonage of the Calvinist church in Jenkovce, Slovakia -- and I got to see and to take to Milka's home to enjoy and

research from, the actual pen-and-ink,bound rosters of this church, from which "my" family records had been microfilmed

y the LDS -- books over 100 years old! (I could hear the virtual gasps of all of you dear readers from thousands of miles away

as the minister's wife, a generous hostess, handed us glasses of juice and some sweets -- reaching across the table to me

over the open archival volume!)

Fran and Milka locate Milka's father's baptismal entry in the parish roster

And at pan Kardos', I got to look at a family Bible I had never known existed! These sources, and talks with pan Kardos

and the others, helped me confirm and expand my knowledge of the info and the lives of these Kardoses, and let them

get to know my side of the family and the USA better.

We looked at some more photos with that other older man, Jan Malejcik, who turned out to be among the closest blood relatives

I met on my trip, though I had not really known of him before, a Kardos-side cousin of pan Kardos, such that he too is my

second cousin once removed. Jan M. raises chickens, as do Milka's neighbors, whose roosters would wake me in the morning

with a blast from the past, farm-style.

The relatives and friends gave me a number of nice gifts, from postcards of Petrovce, CDs of stories and folk music in Slovak,

Slovakia key rings, embroidered items (some made by the women relatives, some commercially), and a lovely typical crystal vase,

to a book on the region's churches, Easter eggs with lacy covers hand-crocheted by a relative, pens, stickers, a Slovakia mouse pad

and a Slovakia calendar for 2003, and some Slovak packaged sweets.

One day we drove up to the Ukraine border, but as had been posited to me, the authorities were not very welcoming about

my adding a visit to one more country - theirs - to my passport. With cajoling, they let me walk without the cousins, across the

border and back, to say I had been, which was basically all I wanted, and they were rather reluctant to allow even this.

I am told the concern is to discourage efforts leading to "underground railroad" departures of their citizens from Ukraine.

On Saturday, after a nice lunch all together at an outside cafe, and a brief visit at Milka's, I headed back with the other translator,

toward that family's home "in the west".  They were wonderful company. We shared some typical meals, and they gave me the

recipe and even the actual spices to make a delicious slow-baked chicken dish. The supermarket at which we got the spices was

quite a lot like New York State'ssupermarkets, except they sold hard liquor and wine there, too. The drinking age in the Slovak

republic is 21. . . and the B.A.C. for driving is 0%.  But in my experience, even sober, many Slovak drivers speed, and pass the

car ahead like maniacs.

I had brought this family a board game, which I enjoyed playing with the kids, who showed me their hamsters. The older son

showed me his English workbook from school -- quite a challenging British-English course, if you ask me about their standards --

and  he took an interest in my translating dictionary. The younger boy is an airplane enthusiast, and drew me one freehand and one

traced picture of some WWII planes.

Maria, the boys and I went to Mass on Sunday. It was like a visit to a U.S. church in 1965, except for the language (Mass is in Slovak).

I found it inspiring; the people dress up for Mass, are quiet and not conversing within the church, don't have

missalettes (at this parish, anyway), and though the congregation was s.r.o. (a few hundred people), only about half the people

ent to Communion, receiving the Host on the tongue over a golden paten held by a traditionally dressed altar boy.

They did have a woman lector. The sung part of the Mass followed the very same familiar quasi-chant melodies we

have long used back home, and my Slovak is good enough to tell that the Canon is, as we are always told, the same all over the RC world.

The church in PB is a large, lovely, high-ceilinged old-style church, with many old and new shrines in wood, confessional booths,

and recently made but old-style stained glass windows. There are lovely Bible-scene, life-sized murals behind the altar,

and a life-sized Calvary shrine in the church, including Jesus, Mary, John, and the two crucified thieves!

We also visited "the Slovak Bethlehem", an amazing hand-carved and motorized wooden display at a small museum,

the artwork roughly 20 feet by 6 feet, depicting several scenes in Slovakia past and present day, as well as the Nativity.

Absolutely amazing, done (in maple, perhaps?) by a man who was in his 70s by the time he finished his single-handed project

of 15 years a few years ago.

We then enjoyed a neat posh spa, with hot and room temperature swimming pools, a coffee bar, lounge area -- my friends and I

really enjoyed this relaxing and, for me, very different afternoon.

Back at their home, and earlier in the week with Jana's family, and later at my hotel, we / I watched a little TV: a John

Wayne movie, Suzanne Somers' old sitcom "Step By Step", and Discovery Channel, all dubbed in Czech; Czech and Slovak language movies;

CNN in English, and American movies in English on video. "Tora, Tora, Tora"'s audio was in English, and it was subtitled in English and in Czech.

On the 9th, we left Povazska Bystrica at 4:45 am so my translator friend could drop me off at the Vienna airport to reverse

my trip's path: Vienna, to London's Heathrow, to Logan Airport in Boston, and back to Syracuse. Personal and baggage

security procedures seemed fairly tight and serious throughout the trip. I left Vienna at 8:40AM their time (6 hrs ahead of US EDT),

and finally (counting flight and lay-over time, and modest delays at Boston) landed at Syracuse about 10:20 PM Syracuse, objectively ~

20 hours by my watch since my departure from Vienna.

Whenever I started to get choked up over realizing I would miss them, the last couple of days there, the relatives and friends

assured me, "that'll only be until you come back again, and bring some other family members or a friend with you."

And I will gladly go back, because as they had said it would be, before I took my trip, it had been a journey "homeward".

A much welcomed experience of belonging and being cared about.

I wish for you, the reader, a happy reunion like the ones we have been granted.  Keep looking for your roots and don't give up!

Thanks for being one of the visitors to this page since March 7, 2001

To Mosconi Home Page                                                                                                                                  E-Mail Fran at FMosconi@aol.com

To beginning of story about the Kardos family's international reunion/family tree