The Farmer, as told by Joe Holler
The Farmer, as told by Joe Holler
His name is Joseph Holler, but here in Surry County and the surrounding area, he is known as Farmer Joe. His wife is Marge, and son, Matt, and they are a beloved part of the modern day history of Surry County because they bring so much joy and the beauty of nature to their customers and our community. Their business is located on Route 31 in the store formerly known as Joe Rowell’s store! Joe’s history, however, does not begin in Surry County or even in Virginia. His childhood began in Hungary! A few months ago, Mark Goodin of Richmond, and his wife Susan Hall, formerly of Surry, interviewed, recorded, and produced Joe’s story. They have all graciously agreed to let us share it in our newsletter and on our website. We have transcribed some of it word for word, and trimmed some, so to hear the full story in Joe and Marge’s own words and with pictures, go to this YouTube link - The Farmer .
They steal your freedom, in the dark. When I was a boy, it was the Nazis. Then the Russians and their secret police. They always seem to come for you in the dark. Maybe that’s why I like sunrise so much. The light feels good. Freedom feels good. I came to America more than 50 years ago, on the run, and scared. I was a little boy in Hungary, growing up and working on a farm with my entire family. Everything was well in my life until 1934 and the beginnings of what would become WWII. The Nazis come over to our house and moved all of us into one room- my parents, three sisters, one brother, and myself. The high officers took over our dining room, using the table to map out their war plans! They planned the war on our dining room table!!
We stayed and slept in that one room, about 4 of us in one bed, until the Nazis got a notice to leave because the war was coming. The Russians were pushing, and the Hungarians, Polish, and Czechoslovakians were fighting against the Russians. While they were at the house, my mom, who was German, would listen over the keyhole and listen to what they were talking about! She told us that one guy said he used a bazooka and blew up three tanks that day. Someone else came in and said he shot many people! This is the way my mom interpreted it to us!
My father had a pair of beautiful registered Lipizzan horses that were drafted to the army! It was a sad day because he had to take them to the railway station. He cried all the way to the station. He was aware of what was going on in our town. He told me that the Jews had received a letter and they were going to have to leave town. They were told to go to a railroad station and could only carry 25 pounds per person. They had to walk to the station, which was about 10-12 miles away! As a kid, we had a pumpkin patch, and it was close beside a brand new highway right behind our house. The Jewish people would run into the pumpkin field to grab a pumpkin to eat. They were so hungry and skinny; some had walked a long distance from their homes. They were told they were going to the promised land, Jerusalem! We all know what really happened to them. I had two good friends and I sure missed them. We had become friends because the Jewish kids went to the Catholic school in my town.
A couple of years after the Jews were gone, their houses were sold, given away, or destroyed. My dad went to an auction where they were selling all of the Jews things. He bought a grandfather clock from his best Jewish friend’s things. My mom was angry because she said she wouldn’t buy anything; she was angry over what they did to the people and didn’t want to remember them by buying their things. My dad said he bought the clock so that when he looks at it, he remembered his best friend! “When I look at that clock, I look at him!”
My grandfather and dad made a root cellar made of concrete. We could put lots of vegetables in in, and my dad stayed in there all the time. He was very much afraid. One time, I was in the root cellar, but came out when I heard so many gun shots. I saw many people running around the house. Soldiers were there- Hungarian, German, and Russians. I could see the Russians because they were only a quarter a mile away… so close! I stood behind a pear tree just watching what was going on. All of a sudden, I heard a machine gun, and the bark of the tree was flying off right next to me! I ran across the street to a neighbor’s house.
In the meantime, several teams of horses were coming towards our house because that is where the colonels were. I noticed that our own horses were the team! They ran so hard that the man who was holding them could not hold the horses back. The gate was closed but our horses ran right through the gate and into the front of the barn where they had always lived!
I came back from our neighbor because it had quieted down for a minute. I looked in the wagon and saw that all kinds of machine guns, riles, hand grenades, and all kinds of explosives were in there. Even a colonel’s uniform was in there! I grabbed the hat and hid it in the cellar, and then I took the harnesses off of the horses. I went upstairs in a hay loft and buried the harnesses, so they couldn’t take the horses. That was what was in my mind to keep our horses!
After that, I saw people running from a castle that was above our home. They were shot and killed. The Russians were right there in our house. They found the hat in the root cellar and thought we were hiding Germans in the cellar, so they were taking my dad out with a rope to hang him. I ran across the street where a woman lived who spoke Russian and told her to run, run, run to help my dad. I put the hat in there from the wagon, okay? She told them, and they didn’t hang my dad. My dad was snow white (in color) by then, all because of me!
My dad prepared us for the war. He knew a lot about it. My older sister was 13 years old, and dad made her dress in boy’s clothes and put shoe polish on her face because women would be raped. My mom was dressed in all kinds of old, raggedy clothes. Our next door neighbors had three daughters down to 10 years of age, and they were all raped by dozens of Russian soldiers! That went on for several weeks until they were stopped by that Russian-speaking woman next door. She was told to talk to one of the Russian colonels. She told the colonel what was going on and he told the soldiers to stay away from those girls or he would shoot them all.
I was only nine years old, and these events added a lot of harm to me. I was very scared after the machine gun was aimed at me and the bark was flying right off that beautiful tree. What bothered me most was the people falling down. I was young, but had an idea of what happened when they fell down. After everything quieted down the next day, we had to check all those people on our farm. Several of our farm workers were dead, and we had to bury those people. My dad asked me to check those people’s pockets. I was afraid because there was blood all over them and bullet holes everywhere because machine guns were used on these people! Before we put them in the graves, I had to check their pockets, and what information I found, I gave to my dad. We marked their graves and then we buried them.
A little boy named Frankie and I used to play together whenever we had a chance. One afternoon, Frankie came by the house and said, “Joe, I found a big huge bullet!” He called it a bullet, but it was a cannon, an unexploded cannon that was underground. Frankie said, “Why don’t we go and take it apart?” However, my dad gave me a chore and I had to clean the horse barn and the cow barn. I had to take the manure out and put beddings in. That was my chore and I told him I couldn’t go because I couldn’t finish my chore before dad comes home and that I couldn’t go with him today. So Frankie said he was going, and left! About an hour later, I heard a big explosion, at least a mile away from my house where he found that big bullet. Another hour goes by and my cousin next door came home from working in the woods where he was working. He said he heard an explosion and he saw body parts all over the trees! I found out my little Frankie, like a brother to me, exploded. He set it off and it exploded, leaving pieces of him!
1954- Hungary is under the control of the Russians.
After the Russians settled in, a large percentage of them lived in our country. We had Russian stations and collective farms. Two men came to our house and told my dad that he was to sign a paper. They wouldn’t tell him what was on the paper, saying he didn’t need to know what’s on the paper. My dad said he would have to read it before he signed it and threw it on the ground. He told them to get out of there because he wasn’t signing anything. They replied that they would be back, and they’re going to fix him! Joe was worried that his dad would be killed and urged him to sign the paper and cede control of the farm to the Communists.
1956- Tired of the Russians control, the Hungarians Revolt- Assigned to guard the Austrian- Hungarian border, Private Joz’sef Holler helps with a plan to lead his fellow soldiers and hundreds of civilians out of out of Communist rule.
I was a border guard at 19 years of age. The people who were there before me decided to escape to Austria because we see the Russians tanks coming by the hundreds at us. We had nothing to fight with other than I had six bullets for my rifle. We can’t fight the Russians with six bullets so we had to get away and save our lives and save other people’s lives.
Marge takes over talking…At some point there was a plan hatched to go to the open the border. To do this they decided to tie up the hands of their commanding officers and march tem at gunpoint across the border, which they eventually did. This left a swath of the Austrian-Hungary border open and eventually, Russian tanks rolled into that area, but before they did, and because the border was open, there were hundreds of people hidden in the fields waiting to cross the border. When this happened, miraculously, many of the Hungarians escaped into Austria. However, after this happened, the Hungarian soldiers, including Joe, were through into an Austrian prison because with the Hungarian uniform, they thought he was a Russian spy or a communist. He was in prison in Austria at least 3 months! One of the stories he tells, Marge says, is that they made him wash the cell floor with the toothbrush quite often to occupy his time! He decided he was going to the United States and that is what he did.
1956- Six months after if started, Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Joe Holler and 2500 other refugees sail for 11 days to reach America. His family in Hungary has no idea whether he is dead or alive. They sailed past the Statue of Liberty. None of the Hungarians knew about the Statue of Liberty, he said. He always said he wished he had known about that. The Catholic Church was there to help these people that had escaped, and because Joe was Catholic, they had given him funds so that he could make the trip to America. Remember that when Joe was in Austria the whole time he was in prison, his parents and his family that he was so close to had no idea where he was. The Revolution was going on and they knew there were battles and that the soldiers were dying, so they had no idea where Joe was.
When he finally made contact with them, he was at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and there in the camp, the Red Cross was there to help. The U.S. Government was feeding them, giving them used clothes! He had one brown shoe and one black shoe that didn’t fit! He’s short and the coat was down to his ankles, but he had clothing! They were kind.
Surry, VA – Present Day- Farmer Joe and Marge have had the store in Surry for 27 years now in 2022! Joe Holler eventually settled in Reading, Massachusetts. His sponsors, Margaret and Kelsey Moore, a prosperous New England couple with two daughters. There, Joe learned to speak English and with the help of his new family, he found work and earned a living. He’d also meet his future wife and partner, Marge, and in 1964, the two would wed, with the Moore Family, who Joe now affectionately called mom and dad in attendance. Joe’s Hungarian family was overjoyed to learn their soldier son had survived the Russian purge in the days following the short-lived Hungarian Revolution. Years later, Joe would host his birth parents on their first trip to the United States, their first trip anywhere, for that matter. They’d brag, no doubt, that their son, Joe, had become a successful American Farmer, one of the new breed of Americans who dreamed big, and who knew first-hand how essential freedom is to the human spirit because for a while, that had had it stolen from them!