Bohuslav Kýr

Bohuslav Kýr’s fam­i­ly lived in Strážnice. His father, who died in 1926, was for many years a coach­man on the estate of Count Mag­nis, while his moth­er was a house­wife who took care of six chil­dren – sis­ter Růže­na (born 1924) and broth­ers Mar­tin (born 1911), Fran­tišek (born 1914), Karel (born 1919) and Adam (born 1926, the youngest). After leav­ing school, the old­er two, Mar­tin and Fran­tišek, went to work to help sup­port the fam­i­ly. After com­plet­ing munic­i­pal school, Bohuslav Kýr was appren­ticed as a brick­lay­er for a year with a rel­a­tive, Fran­tišek Kubík, and then appren­ticed as a tai­lor in Strážnice with the tai­lor called Ježek,[1] also com­plet­ing three years of fur­ther edu­ca­tion. His old­er broth­er Karel trained as a shoemaker.

[1] First name not given.

Bohuslav Kýr start­ed work­ing for the Baťa com­pa­ny in Zlín in 1939 as a work­er on the con­struc­tion of the rail­way line to Vizovice. After a while, about six­ty work­ers were sent to a labour camp in Linz, but typhus broke out there and he fled. In 1941, he reached Koblenz, where he found work in a fire­clay fac­to­ry, but he did not like it there, and about Novem­ber, he says, he again fled. He was caught at the Pro­tec­torate bor­der, arrest­ed and impris­oned; he was released in Jan­u­ary 1942.[1] He returned to his moth­er in Strážnice and start­ed work­ing as a tai­lor in the SLUM folk-cos­tume coop­er­a­tive. He had to leave there[2] togeth­er with his cousin Josef Kýr and anoth­er rel­a­tive Jiří Kýr, and worked on the con­struc­tion of the road to Tišnov. Sub­se­quent­ly, he and six oth­er men were trans­ferred to Slavkov, where he stayed for sev­er­al weeks. From there, togeth­er with Jiří Kýr, he was tak­en to Brno, where they were the only two Roma to join the trans­port to the main [con­cen­tra­tion] camp at Auschwitz. He does not remem­ber the exact date, but it was in the autumn of 1942.

He report­ed to the main camp in Auschwitz as a brick­lay­er. He was only there for a short time, and was soon trans­ferred to Birke­nau [Auschwitz II-Birke­nau] togeth­er with a con­struc­tion team, where they built ovens and the heat­ing ducts between them in the future so-called Gyp­sy camp. Here he was inter­ro­gat­ed in the spring [1943][3] to find out why he was impris­oned. When he answered the ques­tion as to whether he want­ed to meet his broth­ers in the affir­ma­tive, they put him in a block, the num­ber of which he no longer remem­bers, where he did indeed meet his broth­ers. The Block­alteste there was a brutish Roma from the Sude­ten­land who spoke Czech. Kýr and his broth­ers Mar­tin, Adam and Karel were soon trans­ferred back to the main camp to block 18 and were again assigned to the con­struc­tion team.[4] They built the road to the I. G. Far­ben fac­to­ry and also car­ried build­ing mate­ri­als for the SS. One Sun­day while box­ing, he was rec­og­nized by Fran­tišek Stanislav,[5] who had been a deputy of the Peo­ple’s Par­ty in Strážnice, where Bohuslav Kýr came from. Thanks to him, he got into the tai­lor’s shop, where he stayed until his depar­ture to the con­cen­tra­tion camp in Natzweil­er.[6] Kýr says there were many peo­ple on the trans­port, but he does not know the exact num­ber. They had to walk half an hour uphill from the train sta­tion to the camp. It was not large, rel­a­tive­ly new, and had its own cre­ma­to­ri­um. Kýr was in block 6, but a few days lat­er he was brought to the infir­mary togeth­er with eleven oth­er pris­on­ers, six Ger­man and five Czech. With him were Antonín Kýr, Jan Daniel from Petro­vice, Jaroslav Kýr and Jiří Kýr, all about the same age. The next day they were giv­en an injec­tion in the arm, and three days lat­er they had high fevers that last­ed ten to four­teen days. They kept on hav­ing their tem­per­a­ture tak­en and receiv­ing injec­tions to low­er it. Kýr’s wound ini­tial­ly fes­tered but healed after a few weeks. None of the Czechs died; it is not known what hap­pened to the Ger­mans. Lat­er he learned that it was an exper­i­ment with an African dis­ease.[7] After the med­ical exper­i­ment was com­plet­ed, the five Czech pris­on­ers returned to the camp, but Kýr was cho­sen by the SS doc­tor Kre­jčí[8] as a nurse and house ser­vant. Kre­jčí lived with his wife and child in a vil­la out­side the camp gate, and Bohuslav Kýr took care of their house­hold – wash­ing, iron­ing, clean­ing and also sewing. At first he was accom­pa­nied to the vil­la by a guard, but lat­er he was allowed to go alone only under the super­vi­sion of the guard at the camp gate. Dr. Kre­jčí was from Opa­va, and spoke Ger­man with Kýr in the camp, but at home they spoke Czech. At that time, Kýr was not abused and received more food, but he was not in con­tact with his fel­low prisoners.

In the spring of 1944, Dr. Kre­jčí was on leave and new exper­i­ments were being con­duct­ed in the camp. Kýr was again among the twelve select­ed pris­on­ers who were loaded into a car. After about 20 min­utes, they arrived at a low brick build­ing in which Kýr saw test tubes through the open door. The guards then divid­ed them into groups of three; Kýr was with two Poles, one about the same age and the oth­er a lit­tle old­er. The guards led them into a small padded room with a high ceil­ing, a small win­dow near the ceil­ing and a peep­hole in the door. The SS man behind them threw in two test tubes, which broke, and before clos­ing the door behind them, ordered them to walk around. He checked on them every five min­utes. Bohuslav Kýr remem­bered the CPO [civ­il air defence] course he had tak­en, and wet the hem of his shirt with urine, press­ing it to his face. He also lay down on the floor so that he would not get tired walk­ing. After fif­teen min­utes, one of the Poles fell to the ground, and after a while the oth­er one did too. After twen­ty-five min­utes they stopped check­ing them and came for them with tongs, which they used to grab them below the knees, loaded them and took them to the cre­ma­to­ri­um. The civil­ian and the two SS men who were tak­ing their pulse said ​“Noch nicht” [Not yet] over Kýr and left. The two Poles died short­ly after­wards, and Kýr was giv­en cig­a­rettes by the kapo of the cre­ma­to­ri­um and car­ried on a stretch­er to the infir­mary, where he was giv­en beef broth and, short­ly after­wards, bet­ter food. When Dr. Kre­jčí returned from his hol­i­day and found out what had hap­pened to Kýr, he brought him but­ter and more food to make up for it.

When, after about a month, anoth­er [med­ical] exper­i­ment with gas was about to take place, Dr. Kre­jčí arranged for Kýr to leave with a work par­ty for a new camp,[9] about fif­teen kilo­me­tres from Natzweil­er.[10] Kýr took with him a let­ter from Kre­jčí to the com­man­der there, who also spoke Czech; Kýr states that the com­man­der prob­a­bly knew Dr. Kre­jčí well.

In this camp, Kýr worked under­ground, prob­a­bly mak­ing parts for the V2 weapon. He and his team cleaned the tracks, with civil­ians and pris­on­ers work­ing togeth­er. Thanks to a song he sang [Why did the owl hoot so much (ed.)], he made the acquain­tance of a com­pa­tri­ot from Uher­ský Ostroh who was there as a civil­ian work­er; he was prob­a­bly the one who threw him a bag with some food. For sev­er­al days he did oth­er work, and then final­ly he car­ried jugs of tea, cocoa or cof­fee to the SS can­teen before din­ner and break­fast, where he poured the drinks into the pre­pared cups. Thanks to this work, he received new clothes.

After some time he was trans­ferred back to Natzweil­er and again worked at Dr. Kre­jčí’s infir­mary. He learned from the kapo at the cre­ma­to­ri­um that dur­ing the last gas exper­i­ment the pris­on­ers had to be naked and they all died.

After about a month, Dr. Kre­jčí was trans­ferred and left Natzweil­er with his entire fam­i­ly. Kýr was placed with 80 or 90 pris­on­ers on a trans­port to Dachau, where he first worked on a veg­etable plan­ta­tion, and then went to Munich rail­way sta­tion to pull out the dead who had been buried under the rub­ble in the bomb­ing. At Dachau he met Antonin Kýr, with whom he had under­gone the exper­i­ment with the African dis­ease. From Dachau, Kýr was tak­en to Neuengamme, from there to Oranien­burg and then back to Neuengamme; he then dug trench­es near the Dan­ish bor­der and was also at Mep­pen near the Dutch bor­der, where there was an air­field. From there he was evac­u­at­ed to the prison camp Sam­posten near Bre­men, where he was lib­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can Army. 

[1] Accord­ing to camp records, he was impris­oned in the so-called Hodonín Gyp­sy Camp from 5 August to 18 Sep­tem­ber 1942. (ed.)

[2] He does not give a reason.

[3] Prob­a­bly after the camp was up and running.

[4] Bohuslav Kýr’s name does not appear on the lists of so-called a‑socials trans­port­ed from Brno to the Auschwitz I camp in 1942 – 1944. He was reg­is­tered in the Auschwitz II-Birke­nau camp from 19 March to 4 April 1943, when he was trans­ferred to the Auschwitz I trib­al camp.

[5] Fran­tišek Stanislav (1893−1941), may­or of Strážnice in 1932 – 1940, deputy of the Nation­al Assem­bly for the Czechoslo­vak Peo­ple’s Par­ty in 1925 – 1939. In Feb­ru­ary 1941 he was deport­ed to the Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp, where he died in July of the same year. A meet­ing between Bohuslav Kýr and Fran­tišek Stanislav in lat­er years is there­fore unlikely.

[6] The trans­port to the Natzweil­er-Struthof camp was dis­patched on 19 Novem­ber 1943. (ed.)

[7] Unspecified.

[8] First name not given.

[9] No name given.

[10] The camp had been in oper­a­tion since 1941, and short­ly before the evac­u­a­tion there were 18,000 pris­on­ers, includ­ing 74 Ger­man Roma. (ed.)

Bohuslav Kýr made his way home via Nurem­berg and Prague, arriv­ing in Strážnice on 26 July 1945. He was reunit­ed with his broth­ers Fran­tišek and Karel and his sis­ter Růžena.