Berta Krausová

Berta Krausová’s fam­i­ly was the only Romani fam­i­ly liv­ing in a small house in the vil­lage of Snovíd­ky, where Berta went to school. Her father was Florián Daniel, known as Jen­da or Floriš, a well-known horse trad­er. He came from near­by Neso­vice, where his broth­er also used to trav­el with him to var­i­ous mar­kets. Lat­er, the fam­i­ly moved to Snovíd­ky and his father worked as a carter, col­lect­ing iron, for exam­ple, and bring­ing it to the scrap­yards. One of Berta Krausová’s uncles on her father’s side was Antonín Daniel from Osla­vany, they called him Ton­da the Teacher. Anoth­er was Alois Daniel from Bučovice.

Berta Krausová had nine younger siblings.

Their moth­er, Anastázie’s maid­en name was Richterová and she came from the Czech lands. Her fam­i­ly lived in a house at Dobšice near Zno­j­mo. Berta Krausová remem­bers her mater­nal grand­moth­er as a woman who wore skirts, an apron with two pock­ets made of shiny black cloth, wore a scarf tied on her head, and smoked a pipe, a ​“short chibouk”.

Dur­ing the war, the Kraus fam­i­ly were warned by a Czech gen­darme about the trans­ports. From about March to May 1943 they hid in a wag­on in the vicin­i­ty of Snovíd­ky, Bučovice and in the Buchlovy [prob­a­bly Buchlovice] woods. Some­times they hid in the barns of the local inhab­i­tants, some­times they were able to sleep at the house of a game­keep­er. Even­tu­al­ly they took refuge at the home of their grand­moth­er Mrs Richterová at Dobšice near Znojmo.

Dur­ing the war, Berta Krausová and her future hus­band were still chil­dren. But she remem­bers how her future moth­er-in-law was wid­owed dur­ing the war. Her moth­er-in-law already had two chil­dren at that time, the elder Máňa and a son Josef, who lat­er became Berta Krausová’s hus­band, and she was expect­ing a third child, a daugh­ter Berta. The then 18-year-old father of her chil­dren was killed on Vídeňská Street in Brno, near a restau­rant, by a Ger­man Gyp­sy, a cer­tain Raimund [Nový], who was a Gestapo informer and even denounced peo­ple in Auschwitz. She said he was a ​“nasty man”. She did­n’t know why it hap­pened. The wid­ow with three chil­dren then mar­ried her broth­er-in-law, the broth­er of the mur­dered man. 

Berta Krausová attend­ed school in Uher­ské Hradiště and trained as a seam­stress. Her old­er sis­ter stud­ied at the teach­ers’ train­ing col­lege in Kroměříž, but a year before grad­u­a­tion she fell in love and did not fin­ish her stud­ies. Lat­er she com­plet­ed her edu­ca­tion at a hotel school. 

Berta Krausová had four chil­dren with her first hus­band Josef Lagron, but he died a vio­lent death. She lat­er mar­ried a man from the Kraus fam­i­ly and had more chil­dren with him.