<I>The Day</I> Helped to erect Gates between Ukraine and Europe

After World War II, the Ukrainian-Slovakian border divided the village of Selmentsy into two parts: Small Selmentsy in Ukraine and Big Selmentsy in the Republic of Slovakia. Now the two villages are symbolically united into one whole with a gate, one half of which stands in Ukrainian land and another in Slovakia. This gives the relatives, living in different parts of the village, an occasion to meet for a few hours on big holidays and forget the capricious twists of world history. The action was initiated by the FEK Konvektor Ukrayina enterprise and its director Stepan Turovtsyn after The Day carried an article on this story. The key from the gate is kept with the enterprise’s chief engineer, native of this Hungarian-speaking village, Barnabash Adam. “Though the gate is only a symbol, it is a needful one. Though in 1947 our village was split into two with barbed wire, this didn’t split the conscience of its Hungarian population. Our anthem knows no borders and sounds with equal power, no matter who sings it — Ukrainian or Slovak,” Mr. Adam says.

His neighbor, Dezidery Mytro, painted and varnished the gate, with head of the village council Yosyp Ilar organizing the relatives’ meetings on holidays, reports Vasyl ZUBACH, Uzhgorod.