In Eastern-Slavonia, some 18 kilometres south from Osijek, in the triangle bordered by the Osijek-Vinkovci road and railway and the river Vuka, is the village of Laslovo to be found.
Laslovo is still there. No one can erase the traces of its existence. Sadly, today it is only a ruined, damaged, robbed, burnt, dead village full of ghosts.
It is a village almost a thousand years old, whose natives were Hungarians. Some researchers say the village once belonged to the Lackfi, Apor, Beriszlo and Torok families [Hungarian noble families - GyD]. In 1475 the village is mentioned as a fortress. According to 19th century notes Laslovo was a purely Hungarian village, and its inhabitants were Calvinist.
The Calvinst church which was built in 1404 and then re-built in 1878, was destroyed by the aggressors on October 1, 1991 with trench mortars. Nothing was sacred for them.
Already in 1892 there was a Hungarian school in the village, authorised by the Croatian government.
Though the majority of the inhabitants were Hungarians, other nationalities settled in the village after the Second World War. The Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, Italians, Muslims, Macedonians, Germans and Poles lived together in harmony. Moreover, the settlers took up the Hungarian traditions and language for they moved to a Hungarian village.
There are many books written about the life of the people, the system of the big family, the so called zadruga, the folk-poetry which all contain the unrewriteable past of Laslovo. The Hungarians of Slavonia kept their way of house building for a long time: the houses were built on oak sleepers, they did not have windows facing the street, they had the famous portico pillars, and they decorated their "herons", that is, scaffolded wooden boxes for keeping clothes with the most archaic motives. Only the wealth of the last few decades brought an end to this kind of architecture, being replaced with modern, fashionable buildings.
For centuries the people of Laslovo stuck to their language, folk costumes, folk traditions. They stuck to the traditions, the memory of their ancestors: they placed the remains of the past in a folk and museum collection.
The most famous ethnographists, linguists, musicians of the Hungarian Scientific Academy used to visit us to record the peculiarities, the genuine characteristics of the Hungarians in Slavonia.
The name of the once prosperous Laslovo is today the symbol of loneliness and loss. In the ancient homes not even the traces were left of the people of Laslovo.
Last updated on March 19, 1998
szentlaszlo@compunet.hu Dorka