Božena Pflegerová

Bože­na Pflegerová came from a fam­i­ly that trav­elled all year round in a cov­ered wag­on. Her father [Josef Sig­mund] was a knife grinder and her moth­er [Emi­lie Pflegerová] had a license to sell stoneware, which she bought from fac­to­ries in Zno­j­mo and Kunštát. The cou­ple had to have so-called reg­is­tra­tion books, with which they had to report to the may­or in each munic­i­pal­i­ty, who grant­ed them per­mis­sion to stay in the munic­i­pal­i­ty and put a stamp in the book. Only the three youngest daugh­ters lived with their par­ents; the eldest[1] did not go to school because she had to take care of her ail­ing moth­er, but Bože­na Pflegerová and her sis­ter Maria were sent to school by their strict father. Bože­na recalled that she start­ed school in 1928 at Pro­ti­vanov, where the fam­i­ly stayed longer because of the unusu­al­ly harsh win­ter at the turn of 1929. So much snow fell that they could not get out of the wag­on and were in dan­ger of suf­fo­cat­ing inside. The local peo­ple in Pro­ti­vanov shov­elled the snow away from the car­a­van and pro­vid­ed them with food, while her father sharp­ened knives and scis­sors for the peo­ple in return. The fam­i­ly also helped out a local farmer in exchange for being able to sta­ble their hors­es with him. Both Bože­na Pflegerová and her sis­ter Marie fell ill with pneu­mo­nia that win­ter. A retired doc­tor lived in the vil­lage and helped them with med­i­cine. The health of the daugh­ters forced the par­ents to set­tle permanently.They bought a house near Moravský Krumlov, where they also estab­lished a small­hold­ing, which was tak­en care of by the eldest of the sis­ters, while the par­ents trav­elled with a small wag­on cov­ered with a tar­pau­lin to make a liv­ing. Her sis­ter Marie died of tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1934, and Bože­na Pflegerová’s lung con­di­tion returned. For half a year she could not go to school, but thanks to doc­tors and her mother’s care she was saved. She grad­u­at­ed from the ele­men­tary school, com­plet­ed six months of house­keep­ing school and then assist­ed her mother. 

[1] Name not stated.

Bože­na Pflegerová recalled that in 1938 there were rumours that an ​“inven­to­ry of gyp­sies and trav­el­ling peo­ple” was to be tak­en. Her father brought a news­pa­per from the may­or that men­tioned a pro­pos­al to ster­il­ize Romani women, but she said Masaryk reject­ed the pro­pos­al.[1] Nev­er­the­less, they start­ed to issue ​“gyp­sy iden­ti­ty cards” and took inven­to­ries. Bože­na Pflegerová’s par­ents, as well as a broth­er and a sis­ter, were issued with iden­ti­ty cards, even though they were already set­tled. [At the begin­ning of the war], Bože­na Pfleger went to Prague to vis­it her sis­ter, where she met Jan Čer­mák and began to live with him in a small flat in the Pankrác dis­trict of Prague; Čermák’s moth­er lived with them. In 1940 they had twins: a daugh­ter and a son.[2] The son died soon after birth. Jan Čer­mák worked in a join­ery in Dejvice; she bought clothes with cloth­ing coupons, which she exchanged for food in the vil­lages. This was a pun­ish­able offence; she was caught and detained in Pankrác Prison. Dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tions in the Gestapo head­quar­ters at the Petschek Build­ing they tried to per­suade her to col­lab­o­rate. She refused and was sen­tenced to 10 months in prison for the fraud. In April 1941, her son Vlas­tim­il was born in deten­tion and 10 days lat­er she was released. Dur­ing her impris­on­ment, her daugh­ter was cared for by a close friend, and she left the child with her even after her return, tak­ing her only on week­ends. She believed that this saved her daugh­ter from intern­ment in the camp.

At 4 a.m. on August 5, 1942, the Gestapo, togeth­er with civil­ians, and Czech police offi­cers from Mich­le burst into Pflegerova’s apart­ment, told her to pack only the bare essen­tials, and took them to the police sta­tion at Mich­le. There they were hus­tled into the base­ment, where there were already oth­er fam­i­lies. They were told that they would go to do field and forestry work and then return home. She remem­bered one Roma man who, togeth­er with one oth­er asso­ciate, offered to secure the release of the oth­ers if they were paid 20,000 crowns. But Bože­na Pflegero­va had only 10,000 crowns on her. Sev­er­al fam­i­lies paid the mon­ey, but not all of them were released. The next morn­ing they were tak­en in police vans to the Smí­chov rail­way sta­tion and trans­port­ed by train to Mirovice near Písek. On the train there was a relaxed mood, and some­one was play­ing a har­mon­i­ca – they still thought they were going to work. From Mirovice they were tak­en in wag­ons through the neigh­bour­ing vil­lage of Lety to the camp gate, where they were greet­ed in per­son by the direc­tor Janovský: ​“So you are here, and from here your only jour­ney will be to hell. I don’t have any oth­er des­ti­na­tion for your race.”

The chil­dren had one large bar­rack in the mid­dle of the camp, with about 50 huts on either side, about 25 of which were reserved for men. Under one row of huts on the right side was a latrine, a long plank for 8 to 10 peo­ple, with a pit under­neath. At the upper end of the camp was a food store, a carpenter’s shop, and a camp kitchen. Next to the kitchen were two hous­es used as a prison and behind them was the store house. On the low­er side of the camp was a laun­dry, a bath­house with sev­er­al show­ers, and in front of it a bar­rel for dis­in­fec­tion. On the ground floor of the one-storey wood­en house right by the entrance to the camp, the guards had a kitchen, a din­ing room and offices, while upstairs were the gen­darmes’ quar­ters and the camp commander’s flat. Near the gate were the hous­es of oth­er gendarmes.

Upon arrival, every­one in the office had to under­go reg­is­tra­tion with the gen­darmes [Fran­tišek] Havel­ka and [Josef] Hej­duk. Here every­thing of val­ue was hand­ed over and reg­is­tra­tion num­bers were assigned,[3] but they were not tat­tooed. Oth­er things were tak­en to a store­house, which was loot­ed by the kapos or the guards, and what was left was lat­er burned.

Oth­er fam­i­lies arrived dai­ly, and Bože­na was reunit­ed with a num­ber of rel­a­tives, such as her niece Anto­nia Richtro­vá and her fam­i­ly. They all had their heads shaved with hair clip­pers, and after­wards the women were allowed to wear a head­scarf, but had to remove it when they came for roll call. At the same time, all women, men and chil­dren had to under­go dis­in­fec­tion and deworm­ing. This process was super­vised by Mr. Havr­da[4] from the Vinohrady Hos­pi­tal, who was a kind man, accord­ing to Bože­na Pflegerová. He was fond of her son and secret­ly brought her pack­ages with sug­ar, but­ter, gar­lic and cig­a­rettes from her rel­a­tives in Prague. She hid these things in her straw mat­tress but some­one informed on her and she and her one-month-old daugh­ter end­ed up in soli­tary con­fine­ment, where her daugh­ter died two months later.)

The gen­darmes in the camp var­ied, some had vol­un­teered for duty, and some were cru­el – she specif­i­cal­ly recalled Hej­duk, who liked to beat pret­ty women. One of the kapos from among the pris­on­ers, Tomáš Ištván, was also bru­tal, win­ning the favour of the guards by beat­ing women and old men. He was also in the camp with his daugh­ter Kar­la. Bože­na wit­nessed him club­bing to death a pris­on­er called Růžič­ka, nick­named Skála. He had promised to give him food in exchange for gold rings that the old man had hid­den. But he didn’t pro­vide the food, and when Skála demand­ed what he had been promised, he beat him to death. Equal­ly cru­el were the Ger­man kapos Robert, Friedrich, and anoth­er whose name she could not recall, as well as their asso­ciate who was known as Bluma. 

On the oth­er hand, some of the guards showed com­pas­sion, such as [Bedřich] Bělohlávek. Bože­na also spoke favourably of Hav­el[5] and [Josef] Luňáček. The lat­ter caught Pflegerová’s hus­band hav­ing sex with her cousin, Kvě­ta Richtro­vá, and he beat him up for it.[6]

He also con­sid­ered the gen­darme Bedřich Pešek, who worked in the camp kitchen super­vis­ing the meals, to be a good per­son. The dai­ly ration con­sist­ed of black cof­fee sub­sti­tute, soup and 200 grams of bread. The direc­tor, Janovský, robbed the pris­on­ers of their food rations, and instead of hav­ing the sup­plies unloaded in the store­house, he had them unloaded in his apart­ment and took them by car to Prague. Often there was no salt to flavour the turnip soup. Only pris­on­ers who worked out­side the camp, such as on forestry work, were bet­ter off. They cooked bet­ter there and some­times peo­ple from the vil­lages gave them some extra food.

Bože­na Pflegerová was assigned to the sick bay, where she assist­ed Dr. Beck,[7] tak­ing tem­per­a­tures, dress­ing sores and admin­is­ter­ing aspirin, the only med­ica­tion avail­able. Thanks to this work, she and her son were vac­ci­nat­ed against typhus and dysen­tery, as were oth­er female pris­on­ers who worked for the camp staff. When typhus spread in the camp, they were even housed in a dor­mi­to­ry out­side the camp so that they would not spread typhus to the guards. Even so, some became infect­ed, includ­ing Hej­duk. Com­man­der Janovský ordered Bože­na to take care of him 24 hours a day, but she got him to agree to her tak­ing care of Hej­duk only dur­ing the day, because of her two-year-old son. She took care of Hej­duk for three weeks.

She had only pos­i­tive mem­o­ries of Dr. Beck, who may pos­si­bly have saved her life. He noticed a sore on her foot, where her clog had been rub­bing her instep, and her foot was already turn­ing blue. He made an inci­sion in her foot and cau­ter­ized the wound with a pock­et knife heat­ed over a can­dle. She had a vis­i­ble scar for the rest of her life.

Pris­on­ers died dai­ly in the camp, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the typhus and dysen­tery epi­demics. Their bod­ies were piled up by the well, where they were cov­ered with blan­kets before being tak­en to the for­est. There, they were ​“buried like cat­tle” – dumped in a pit and cov­ered with lime. Before the typhus epi­dem­ic, they were still buried in the ceme­tery in Mirovice, where Božena’s daugh­ter, who died on 2 Decem­ber 1942, had also been taken.

Bože­na Pflegerová recalls two trans­ports to Auschwitz from Lety. Before the first of them, women were asked to vol­un­teer if they want­ed to go on a work detail; among oth­er things, they would be able to send their chil­dren food parcels. About 90 women vol­un­teered, and 80 of them were select­ed, but instead of going on the work detail, they went straight to Auschwitz. She also recalled the selec­tion car­ried out by Dr Kuchař and Mareš: they exam­ined the pris­on­ers’ teeth and felt their skulls. About 60 pris­on­ers were sent to the left side and the rest to the right side, who were then all tak­en away by bus­es and end­ed up in Auschwitz. Bože­na Pflegerová was lucky and stayed in Lety with her son. The thiev­ing com­man­der Janovský was replaced by [Štěpán] Blahyn­ka who had been the top-rank­ing gen­darme at the camp at Hodonín u Kunštá­tu[, and was a strict but fair man. He saw to it that every­one received their food rations, prop­er med­ical care, and so on. In the end, they were giv­en their papers in the office and released, and only a few pris­on­ers remained to burn the entire camp. 

[1] In 1938, Pres­i­dent Thomas G. Masaryk had been dead for three years. It is like­ly that there was a con­fu­sion with 1927, when the law ¹¹⁷⁄₁₉₂₇ ​“on itin­er­ant gyp­sies” was adopt­ed, which intro­duced the so-called ​“gyp­sy iden­ti­ty cards”, and in 1929 a cen­sus of so-called ​“cikáni” was also held. This would also explain why Bože­na did not receive an iden­ti­ty card. These were not issued to chil­dren under the age of 14.

[2] Names not stated.

[3] Bože­na Pflegerová was impris­oned in the so-called gyp­sy camp at Lety with the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber 69 (from 5 August 1942 to 27 May 1943, when she was released), and her son Vlas­tim­il (born 1941) was also reg­is­tered under the same num­ber from 29 August 1942; on 2 Sep­tem­ber 1942 her daugh­ter Berta Štěpán­ka was born there, and she died in the camp on 2 Decem­ber 1942. (ed.)

[4] Antonín Havr­da, dis­in­fec­tor, employ­ee of the Prague Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Sta­tion (ed.)

[5] No fur­ther details.

[6] The guard Josef Luňáček is often eval­u­at­ed neg­a­tive­ly by Romani detainees and ev by his fel­low guards, so it is a there­fore not clear whether the sur­vivor meant those words iron­i­cal­ly, or whether, on the con­trary, in light of the afore­men­tioned episode of her husband’s revealed infi­deli­ty, she had a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the guard. (ed.)

[7] This was either Dr. Alfred Milek or, more like­ly, Dr. Michael Bohin. These doc­tors worked as prison doc­tors in the camp. There is no infor­ma­tion about a doc­tor named Beck in the lit­er­a­ture about the camp at Lety. (ed.)