The fence is so close to Lizák’s window that patrolling border guards often peer in as they walk by, which forces him to keep his curtain closed. This divided village has the enduring and painful memories of life long before the systemic changes of a decade and a half ago. "I have lived in four different countries," said Lizák, "without leaving this village where I have lived my whole life."

Bureaucracy and expense for visas

Lizák’s village is not the only one in Eastern Europe divided by a border, but what makes this village unique is the fact that the nearest border crossing is 40 km away, which makes traveling literally across the street a prohibitively time consuming, expensive trip for Lizák and his neighbors, many of whom are elderly and poor. Most people no longer even make the effort to "go to the other side" because of the bureaucracy and expense involved in securing visas, the distance and diminishing close relations between the two sides – a result of their years apart.

“I have a cousin in Solonci, but I’ve only seen her on TV,” said Lizák’s 5 - year-old granddaughter, Anna. Before the fence was erected by the Soviet Union in 1944, ditches were on either side, and a guard tower was on the Ukrainian side. Velke Slemence and Solonci used to be one village, called Szelmenc, by the mainly ethnic Hungarian inhabitants.

Now that Slovakia is a European Union member and Ukraine is not, the border symbolizes the division between East and West more than ever before for the 809 residents of the two villages. They have been hoping for a border crossing for 60 years, with no luck until recently, when the Hungarian-American community began a series of lobbying efforts.

Sándor Nagy, president and founder of the Center for Hungarian American Congressional Relations (CHACR) in Washington DC, made it the organization’s mission to help create a border crossing in the village. And on June 30th, CHACR welcomed an agreement by a Slovak-Ukrainian inter-governmental committee, which met in Slovakia, where an agreement was reached to open a border crossing through the town.

Forgotten village

" This is a forgotten village. It’s as if time froze there," said Nagy, just weeks before the resolution to the impasse was announced. "This story really is a relic of the Cold War. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s an injustice. The villagers are not asking to be reunited under the same flag, just to be able to walk through the fence to the other side of the village."

Szelmenc is located 12 miles north of where the Ukrainian, Slovak and Hungarian borders meet. Throughout the past century, the village has been passed between nations several times. It first belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, and then became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of World War I when the Treaty of Trianon awarded Hungary’s neighbors two thirds of its land along the borders. Next, the village became part of Czechoslovakia, although from 1938 to 1944 it was briefly part of Hungary.

The village was then split in 1944 when Soviets arrived, and people on the Solonci side were coerced into signing a petition stating they wanted to belong to the Soviet Union. Velke Slemence again ended up in Czechoslovakia, while Solonci became part of the Soviet Union. A border was erected through the middle of the village’s main street, disregarding the families it separated, even demolishing a house that stood in its way. When the Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in December 1991, Solonci (also known as Kisszelmenc, or Small Szelmenc) became Ukrainian and when Czechoslovakia split in January 1993, Velke Slemence (also known as Nagyszelmenc, or Big Szelmenc) became a part of Slovakia. Nagy’s lobbying lead members of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus to send a letter to Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma requesting a renewed effort to create a border crossing between Velke Slemence and Solonci. There was also a Human Rights Caucus briefing on the issue in April in Washington, at which mayor’s from both villages testified, along with Slovakian Ambassador to the US Rastislav Kacer, and a counselor from the Ukrainian Embassy.

The trip to Washington was the first time Velke Slemence Mayor Lajos Tóth and Solonci Mayor Jozsef Illár met facetoface, without the border separating them.

“There is a new piece of EU legislation, which if approved, would allow for little border crossings for locals,” said Kacer, before the inter-governmental committee came to a conclusion of their own. “The EU is very cautious about this because this could be a loophole which could help illegal migration, so it should be very carefully handled.” According to Tóth, in the few months preceding EU enlargement, 120 people were caught trying to sneak from Ukraine to Slovakia through the Szelmenc border – mostly Afghans, Africans and Chinese.

The worst part about the border running through the village is that you cannot just walk over to the other side, said several people on the Velke Slemence side as they stood and gazed at the fence, shaking their heads. EU expansion means less restrictive borders among the new member states, but increased border regulation along the edge of the new larger EU, including the Szelmenc border. The common EU strategy for Ukraine, adopted in December 1999, mentioned the need for stronger border management as a key issue. Perhaps even more important than the expected opening of a border crossing, would be that a visa waiver program be instated for Szelmenc’s residents, through which they could cross the border visa-free, or with a special ID.

Communicating with the other side

The people of Szelmenc will no longer have to disguise their attempts at communicating with each other across the fence, to which they have become accustomed. For years it was forbidden to shout across the border, which forced villagers to communicate creatively. While they worked in the fields, they pretended to shout at their fellow workers, but their hollers were directed at those across the fence. They also disguised messages, such as the announcement of a wedding or a funeral, in Hungarian folk songs. The fact that the guards have always either spoken Russian, Ukrainian or Slovakian, and the villagers speak Hungarian, made it easier to disguise communication.

In the past, there have been brief periods — depending on who was in power — when crossing was permitted for weddings and funerals. “If we are not able to get a small border crossing, it is very scary that the residents of our villages will lose each other completely,” said Illár before his testimony in Washington. "A small border crossing would also help our economic situation.” Villagers had hoped they would get a border crossing by May 1st, with EU enlargement but that didn’t happen. A few months ago Lizák traveled to Solonci for a visit. Instead of the five minutes it should have taken to walk there, it took the pensioner three days of traveling and a total of 680 km. He had to travel 80 km to get there — 40 km north to the nearest border crossing in Unghvar and then 40 km south back to Solonci. In addition, he had to twice travel to Presov, a town 130 km away — first to apply for a visa, and then to pick it up.

"It’s not possible to do it by mail or even to have a relative pick it up," he said. To make matters worse, his pension is some EUR 175 a month and a visa takes a week to go through, and costs him EUR 30.

Traveling from the Ukrainian side to the Slovakian side is even more difficult, and is rarely done.

The symbol of division

"For us it is not that tragic because we are not the oldest generation, the ones who were in their twenties when the border was put up. For these people it was a real tragedy," said István Gilány, a Velke Slemence village council member. "For us it’s natural, which is why we wanted to put up the Székely gate, to show the younger generation that this is not natural."

The 15-foot-high Székely gate, a traditional carved wooden gate found in Transylvania, was erected next to the border in late 2003 as part of a protest. “The protest brought attention to this problem because it was all over the news in Hungary, Slovakia, and the Ukraine,” said Nagy. “It was a grassroots initiative and signaled the determination of the villagers to be reunited with each other again.”

For villagers, the Szekely gate is a powerful sign that the two sides haven’t forgotten about each other. The unique thing it, however, is that it has been cut in two pieces, like Szelmenc itself — one side stands on the Slovakian side, the other on the Ukrainian, opening toward each other but separated by the border.