Antonín Murka

Antonín Mur­ka grew up in the vil­lage of Veselá[1] with his moth­er Aloisie Mur­ka, father Řehoř Mur­ka and eight sib­lings. Three oth­er fam­i­lies lived with them in their own house, of whom he men­tioned by name Maria Mur­ka, Anna Šuber­tová and her son Jan Šubert and his wife Antonie. Mur­ka earned his liv­ing by work­ing as a labour­er, help­ing out on road con­struc­tion sites. In the neigh­bour­ing vil­lage of Klečův­ka, for exam­ple, he dug silage pits for a Ger­man landowner. 

[1] Veselá, okres Zlín (ed.)

When Mur­ka was get­ting ready for work on August 1, 1942, a gen­darme came for him and took him to the sta­tion in Lípa.[1] There he had to join the trans­port from Vizovice to Hodonín [to the so-called Gyp­sy camp]. In the car­riage he met his moth­er’s rel­a­tives, who had been arrest­ed in Vizovice the day before. They got off the train in the vil­lage of Ned­vědice and walked over the hill to the camp. Upon arrival, chaos ensued, with the gen­darmes beat­ing the pris­on­ers with batons to force them to line up in fives. A cer­tain Daniel and his fam­i­ly arrived by trans­port from Žele­chovice; he was hold­ing his young son in one arm and a blan­ket in the oth­er. When he dis­obeyed the gen­darme’s order to put the blan­ket down, the gen­darme pulled a baton on him, but instead of Daniel he hit his son on the head, caus­ing him to die of his injuries.[2]

After arrival and reg­is­tra­tion, every­one had to take a bath togeth­er. All 50 or so washed them­selves in one buck­et of water regard­less of gen­der, age or ill­ness. Then they were all shaved clean and dressed in black uni­forms. They were housed in three bar­racks, each with 50 bunk beds against the walls. Only those who were mar­ried were allowed to stay together.

The work was hard, the male and female pris­on­ers were build­ing a road. Mur­ka broke rocks to be trans­port­ed to the con­struc­tion site, the old­er women were break­ing rocks into grav­el and the younger women were load­ing earth from the exca­va­tions onto carts. Some of the women also worked direct­ly in the camp, such as Kvě­ta Ondrášová who worked in the infir­mary with a doc­tor he called Fáber[3], and Vlas­ta Danielová who cleaned the gen­darmes’ canteen.

The food was mod­est: unsweet­ened black cof­fee, soup or gravy for lunch, with a quar­ter loaf of bread. They received a piece of meat at most once a week, oth­er­wise only pota­toes. The bread was deliv­ered to the camp by a bak­er from Rozseč, who also sold it secret­ly to the pris­on­ers for gold.

There was a high death rate in the camp. Ini­tial­ly, they were buried in the ceme­tery in Čer­novice in plank box­es; lat­er a bur­ial ground was estab­lished near the camp. There, the dead were buried in a pit 4 by 2 metres in paper bags tied at the neck so that the head of the deceased was exposed. They were then cov­ered with only a thin lay­er of earth, so some­times ani­mals would get to them at night and tear them to pieces, so that the next morn­ing they would have to be buried again.

Mur­ka was cho­sen as a so-called ​“pri­vate”,[4] who saw to it that no one attempt­ed to escape. He con­sid­ered run­ning away him­self, but did not want to endan­ger his moth­er and sib­lings, who were still at lib­er­ty. His part­ner, Hed­vi­ka, had been interned in the camp ear­li­er in an advanced state of preg­nan­cy. She gave birth to their child, who died there short­ly after­wards.[5] When his moth­er’s com­pan­ion Beči­ca wrote to Mur­ka at the camp that his moth­er and sib­lings had been tak­en to Auschwitz, he decid­ed to escape in May 1943. By that time the typhus epi­dem­ic was dying down and the gen­darmes were able to go home on leave after a long time, with only a few remain­ing in the camp. Mur­ka was work­ing on dig­ging a trench for a water main behind the camp,. Four men would dig and four would watch to make sure that the ditch did not col­lapse. When Mur­ka was super­vis­ing the work, togeth­er with Blažej Dydi, Miroslav[6] from Valašské Klobouky and Lud­vík Mur­ka from Dol­ní Lho­ta, the four agreed to start chas­ing the muskrats run­ning around there and use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to escape. Miroslav and Lud­vík Mur­ka fled in anoth­er direc­tion and were both shot in sep­a­rate inci­dents. [7]

Blažej came from the area around Březův­ka, so they head­ed there togeth­er. On the way they rest­ed at the house of a cer­tain Kaláč, Blažej went to the neigh­bour­hood to buy cig­a­rettes, but was caught by a gen­darme. Lat­er, Mur­ka learned that Blažej had been tak­en to Auschwitz, where he was a kapo. After the war, he was rec­og­nized in Vítkov, denounced and sub­se­quent­ly con­vict­ed.[8]

Mur­ka then hid with the hill farm­ers around Dešná. First, [Alois] Ošk­era hid him in a hayloft for two weeks right in Dešná (his fam­i­ly was mur­dered at the end of the war for help­ing the par­ti­sans). He con­tin­ued to hide and helped out with the Podeše­va fam­i­ly in Jasen­ná, the Lukšů and Chovanec fam­i­lies at Všem­i­na, and the Kolář fam­i­ly at Březůvky in return for food and lodg­ing. He could not afford to refuse even hard work, so that no one would turn him in; he broke stone for a build­ing for one of the farm­ers, for example. 

The Ger­mans searched hous­es look­ing for par­ti­sans. One day he had to hide from them in an oven, that one of the farmer’s wives was fir­ing to bake bread.

At the Lukšůs at Všem­i­na he met Jir­ka Mokrý from Prostějov, who fought in Slo­va­kia and was tak­en pris­on­er, but man­aged to escape. He want­ed to join the par­ti­sans, so Mur­ka took him to Prlov,[9] where he had friends. On the first of Sep­tem­ber 1944, at Turín’s farm, they met [Dajan Bojanovič] Murzin[10] and joined the par­ti­sans. But first they had to get weapons them­selves. There were a con­sid­er­able num­ber of armed Hun­gar­i­an sol­diers in the area. They chose a house­hold in Pozdě­chov where four sol­diers hap­pened to be eat­ing with their weapons propped up near the door. With their fierce appear­ance and car­ry­ing a heavy axe they man­aged to deprive them of their weapons and ammunition.

Mur­ka became the com­man­der of a small group and was giv­en the nick­name Ton­da Cigán. Togeth­er with him in the group were Jir­ka Mokrý and a Yugoslav called Teodor Simin, as well as ten Russ­ian pris­on­ers of war, of whom he remem­bered the names Misha, Pyotr and Chaikovsky, and eleven local boys, of whom he specif­i­cal­ly named Řepišťálek, Rafaj, Gerža and Mikeska from Zád­veřice, and Kalivo­da, Bělíček, Tomáš, Heš and Jančík from Vizovice.

Mur­ka briefly list­ed the actions in which he and his par­ti­san group took part: ​“Ner­a­tov – bar­rack Ger­mans, Luton­i­na – Hun­gar­i­ans, Veselá – Ger­mans, Žele­chovice – Ger­mans, Pin­du­la-Kudlov – dis­arm­ing Ger­mans, Lípa – Ger­mans, Újezd u Vizovic – caught 30 Ger­mans, exe­cu­tion by hang­ing at Ploštin.”[11]

In March 1945, Mur­ka was spend­ing the night with Jir­ka Mokrý and the Yugoslav Teodor in Prlov at Slávek Hov­ezák’s house when a liai­son came at four o’clock in the morn­ing and report­ed that the Ger­mans had arrived in the vil­lage look­ing for par­ti­sans. So all three of them fled to the Senin pas­ture to warn their fel­low com­bat­ants. They found Cap­tain Petr Buď­ka, Vasil and Aleks at the Jiřičeks and the six of them set off in the direc­tion of Leskovec; there were not many places left to hide in. In the evening they split up again, Mur­ka, Jir­ka and Teodor join­ing a group of 24 par­ti­sans under the com­mand of Sasha [Alexan­der Trofi­movich Kotl­yarov] at Ploštin. [Brigade com­man­der] Murzin sent a liai­son after them with orders not to take any action, because the Ger­mans had declared that they would exe­cute every tenth cit­i­zen in a vil­lage in which a dead Ger­man was found. The par­ti­sans respect­ed the order and set off in the direc­tion of Valašské Klobouky, as close to the front as pos­si­ble. In the vil­lage of Lip­ina they found lodg­ing and food at [Karel] Oves­ný’s. In a neigh­bour­ing house they were in mourn­ing for some­one who had died, so in order not to arouse the sus­pi­cions of the neigh­bours, Oves­ný joined in the prayers for the dead per­son and asked the par­ti­sans not to attract atten­tion and to put only one man on guard. In the morn­ing the Ger­mans broke into the house and the par­ti­sans had to shoot their way out of the vil­lage. Two par­ti­sans were killed and five wound­ed there.[12]

In ear­ly May, the group sup­port­ed Sovi­et sol­diers in the lib­er­a­tion of Vizovice. On the night of May 4 to 5, Jir­ka Mokrý died there when he stepped on a mine.

Murka’s entire fam­i­ly per­ished in the con­cen­tra­tion camps, only his broth­er Rudolf Mur­ka returned. Antonín Mur­ka had a cer­tifi­cate that he was a polit­i­cal pris­on­er (from 1 August 1942 to 1 May 1943) and a cer­tifi­cate of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the nation­al lib­er­a­tion strug­gle (from 1 Sep­tem­ber 1944 to 5 May 1945). In May 1945 he was award­ed the badge of hon­our of the first degree and the medal of the sec­ond degree, and in May 1969 he was award­ed a medal for ser­vice to his country. 

[1] Lípa, today part of the vil­lage of Žele­chovice nad Dřevnicí, dis­trict Zlín. (ed.)

[2] Prob­a­bly Ladislav Daňhel, born 1911 in Žele­chovice nad Dřevnicí, Zlín dis­trict, and his one year old son Jiří, who died in Hodonín on 7 Novem­ber 1942. (ed.)

[3] Cor­rect­ly Wyro­ba, see the mem­oirs of Hil­da Lanik, née Ondrášová. (ed.)

[4] The low­est lev­el of camp guard.

[5] Hed­vi­ka Heráková, born 1926 in Újezd, Zlín dis­trict. Her son Antonín, born on 24 Octo­ber 1942 in Hodonín, died there on 18 Decem­ber 1942. (ed.)

[6] He’s not sure of the name.

[7] Lud­vík Mur­ka, born 1908 in Nevšová, Zlín dis­trict. Accord­ing to Oldřich Tomaj from Luhačovice, he was shot by a game­keep­er and died of his wounds in the hos­pi­tal in Uher­ské Hradiště. (ed.)

[8] See the mem­oirs of Anastázia Buri­an­ská, née Adamová, and Ire­na Herák. (ed.)

[9] Prlov was one of the vil­lages burned down by the Nazis at the end of the war because the locals were help­ing the par­ti­sans. On 23 April 1945, they burned eight build­ings and mur­dered 23 inhabitants. 

[10] Dajan Bojanovich Murzin, com­man­der of the 1^st Par­ti­san Brigade of Jan Žiž­ka in 1944 – 1945 (ed.)

[11] Plošti­na is an extinct pas­toral­ist set­tle­ment of Drnovice, near Valašské Klobouk in Moravia, which was burnt down by the Nazis on 19 April 1945 and its inhab­i­tants mas­sa­cred for sup­port­ing the partisans.

[12] The group want­ed to con­tact Karel Oves­ný from Lip­ina for a rec­om­men­da­tion, but there was a mix-up and they approached his cousin of the same name. He direct­ed them to the cor­rect Karel Oves­ný, but then turned them in at the gen­darmerie sta­tion in Valašské Klobúky. More details here: https://​www​.jurick​u​vm​lyn​.cz/li…