Anna Růžičková

Anna Růžičková was born the eldest of sev­en sib­lings to Johana and Robert Růžič­ka. They had four hors­es, her father was a carter and vio­lin deal­er, and her moth­er sold quilts. The fam­i­ly pros­pered; they bought two hous­es, one of them at Zdaboř. The chil­dren went to the local ele­men­tary school. Růžičková describes very good rela­tions with non-Romani neigh­bours, cit­ing as an exam­ple the school prin­ci­pal Staňek, who was always sad­dened when ​“they took them away”, or neigh­bours in Zbraslav and Ďáblice, who were afraid that the Růžičkas would sell their house and some­one else would move in.

Around 1942, Anna Růžičková’s father received a warn­ing from Ulrich, a police­man in Bře­zové Hory, that they would ​“go to the camp” and rec­om­mend­ed him to join the par­ti­sans. But the father refused, because they were expect­ing the birth of a son at any time. Because of the air raids, the fam­i­ly stayed in their house in Zdaboř, which was sit­u­at­ed apart, close to the for­est. At 4 o’clock one morn­ing, Czech gen­darmes came for them with some­one in a Ger­man uni­form and took them to the prison in Příbram, where they sep­a­rat­ed Anna Růžičková and her moth­er from her father and broth­er and placed them in dif­fer­ent cells. Before leav­ing, they had man­aged to give their lodger, Mrs. Kocourková, the address of her uncle and aunt in Lysá nad Labem, ask­ing her to inform them. The fam­i­ly was then tak­en to Prague and placed in a wood­en out­build­ing, to which oth­er Romani fam­i­lies were brought in red bus­es. They were then called by name and tak­en away, but the Růžičkas were released. Her uncle and aunt, who were very wealthy, ran­somed them; her aunt, who was not Romani, had the name of Blümlová before she mar­ried. They ran­somed them three times in total, and the Růžičková aunt men­tioned a cer­tain doc­tor of law (prob­a­bly named Beneš) from Hanspaul­ka [in Prague] who helped medi­ate it for them.

Nev­er­the­less, Anna Růžičková was even­tu­al­ly interned along with her aunts. The aunts in the camp act­ed as war­dens in the chil­dren’s bar­racks and lived in a sep­a­rate room where Růžičková lived with them and helped them with the chil­dren. In the camp she con­tract­ed diar­rhoea and suf­fered from her­pes. Lice were a big prob­lem, and she and her aunts washed the chil­dren’s heads and cut their hair, but even then it was impos­si­ble to get rid of them. They were most­ly giv­en bread to eat, and soup at noon.

She also remem­bers the ubiq­ui­tous mud in the camp.

After the war Anna Růžičková lived with her par­ents in a house in Bře­zové Hory near Příbram and lat­er in fam­i­ly hous­es in Prague or Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav.

Her sis­ter Karolí­na [Kozáková-Vdolečková, see her tes­ti­mo­ny in the data­base] trained as a print­er and moved to Brno. Her sis­ter Jana [Schindler Růžičková] grad­u­at­ed from the con­ser­va­to­ry and moved to Gene­va, where she taught at her own bal­let school.[1] Her broth­er Jan worked in the office of the Jáchy­mov mines and her broth­er Josef worked as a chauf­feur in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland.

Anna Růžič­ka mar­ried Augustýn Růžič­ka nick­named Gus­ta (1925, Štoky, Jihla­va dis­trict — year of death unknown), a child­hood friend who returned from the con­cen­tra­tion camps as an orphan. A daugh­ter and a son were born to them. Her hus­band was a trained grinder, but he made his liv­ing main­ly by sell­ing cloth. Anna Růžičková opened a tex­tile stall.

[1] Jana Schindler Růžičková, born 1948. (ed.)