A Herman Ottó Múzeum évkönyve 48. (2009)

Marozsán Zsolt: Dohánytermesztők a Sajó-völgyben (A sajószentpéteri sváb kisebbség története)

SZEBENI Ilona 1992 Merre van a magyar hazám?... Kényszermunkán a Szovjetunióban 19441949. Debrecen 1993 Haza fogunk menni. Kényszermunkán a Szovjetunióban 1944-1949. Mozgáskorlátozottak PIREMON Kisvállalata, Debrecen TAKÁCS Lajos 1964 A dohánytermesztés Magyarországon. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest TÓTH Péter 2007 Válogatott források Sajószentpéter történetéhez. Sajószentpéter TOBACCO-GROWERS IN THE SAJÓ VALLEY (History of the German minority in Sajószentpéter) Similarly to County Borsod, Sajószentpéter does not lie in a traditionally ethnically mixed region. The mass appearance of German speaking groups occurred at a fairly late date, at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries, in the wake of the general economic boom in Hungary. The ancestors of the present-day German minority arrived to and settled in different parts of County Heves in the early 18th century. Tobacco production boomed across the entire country after the Germans settled in County Heves because their activity was not restricted to this region alone. The national centres of tobacco production had shifted by the later 19th century with the emergence of new tobacco growing areas. During their migration, the tobacco-growers of County Heves also reached various areas of present-day County Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén. Their centre in this region was Dusnokpuszta near Sajószentpéter, The arrival and settlement of German groups in Dusnokpuszta brought prosperity to the village which had earlier been depopulated. The Sucbian Germans settling here were deeply religious. Their piety is reflected by the fact that in 1922 they donated a piece of their own land for the new church to be built in the village. The construction of the new church was begun after the settlement's re-population, parallel to the establishment of the school. The two buildings lying on a joint plot of land functioned as the school chapel until 1978, when the diocese built a new church. The former school now functions as a community centre, while the chapel has retained its original function and serves the residents' spiritual needs. The subsequent ethnic breakdown of Sajószentpéter was to a large extent determined by the coal mining in the Sajó Valley: from the late 19th century onward, several coal mines operated by various smaller and larger mining companies were opened and a glass factory utilising the energy provided by coal was also founded. Skilled workers were needed for mining and for the production of glass in the factory; since the broader Sajószentpéter area lacked workers of this type, the owners invited workers to the area from other industrial regions in the country. The newly-arrived groups formed a colourful ethnic medley of Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Slovaks, Germans and Hungarians, although the two dominant minorities were the Slovaks and Germans. Jobs not calling for any particular expertise were filled by the peasant living in Sajószentpéter and the neighbouring villages, who were usually employed as seasonal workers; they were known as the "migrant miners". Many former tobacco-growers from Dusnok found seasonal employment in the mines and the factory, as shown by the parish registers of Dusnok, in which different occupations are sometimes entered for the same individuals. The German groups arriving to the area played an important role in the settlement's life and soon began to be assimilated. The arrival of the Red Army in 1945 had disastrous consequences for many: a hundred civilians, among them fourteen persons of German origin or with a German surname, were deported for what was called malenkiy robot ("a little work"), but was in fact