Božena Valdová

Bože­na Val­dová grew up in Žer­a­novice as an only child, since her twin broth­er died when he was about nine months old. The fam­i­ly lived in a house togeth­er with her father’s younger broth­er, his wife and their three chil­dren. Their house, which was next door to anoth­er broth­er’s house, was built by the two men with their own hands. Her father’s name was Herák[1] and he was a horse trader.

[1] First name not given.

When, as she said, it was about to hap­pen [mean­ing the arrests and trans­ports], they fled to Lidečko in Mora­vian Wal­lachia, where they hid in someone’s home,[1] and lat­er in the for­est. The local gen­darmes knew about them but left them alone. It was only when the Heráks were denounced – alleged­ly by a Romani man orig­i­nal­ly from Žer­a­novice – that the gen­darmes took them to police head­quar­ters in Brno on the basis of an arrest war­rant, and from there, after about a month, to ​“Hodonínek”. She went to work with her par­ents, break­ing stones into grav­el, and she says that the con­di­tions there were less severe than in Auschwitz, to which the fam­i­ly was deport­ed in August.[2] They were tak­en by pas­sen­ger train and in Ostra­va, where there was a stop, the gen­darmes repeat­ed­ly tried to per­suade her to go for water. She thought they want­ed her to escape and save her­self, but she had no inten­tion of aban­don­ing her par­ents, so she pre­ferred not to fetch water in order not to miss the train.

After arriv­ing at Auschwitz, they went on foot to the camp, where an SS man spoke to them in the assem­bly area. She said the block chief (Blokalteste), who did not want them not to make any noise, inad­ver­tent­ly slapped her on the leg with a lath which had a nail in it; it pierced her leg, and although her father imme­di­ate­ly sucked the wound clean, she still had a scar there.

When clothes and under­wear were issued,[3] they were ugly and stained, so she said she would not wear them. She now realised she could have endan­gered her par­ents, but the SS offi­cer who was called in found it amus­ing that it was a child and not the adults who had rebelled, and ordered clean­er under­wear and clothes to be select­ed for her.

Among the recep­tion pro­ce­dures, she men­tioned the tat­too­ing of prison num­bers and the humil­i­at­ing mass bath, where men, women and chil­dren had to strip naked and show­er togeth­er. Their hair was already cut from Hodonín, and only the heads of those whose hair had grown or who were lice-rid­den were shaved.

The fam­i­ly was placed in block num­ber 10, which was still being com­plet­ed. A kind of chim­ney stretched along the ground in the mid­dle of the bar­racks, which heat­ed both sides, and the pris­on­ers slept on three-storey bunk beds under rough, coloured blan­kets. Lice and sca­bies plagued them because of their lack of hygiene. Their block chief,[4] whose per­son­al bar­ber was Val­dová’s father, was very cru­el. He had his own room in the block, in which his mis­tress, nick­named Lači (mean­ing ​“good” in Romani), lived with him. She was not, how­ev­er, a good per­son; for exam­ple, she beat Val­dová’s moth­er, who was in an advanced stage of preg­nan­cy, for repeat­ed­ly giv­ing a lit­tle boy a bit extra when she was shar­ing out food.[5] Then, while dig­ging the sew­ers, they acci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­ered the hid­ing place in which the block chief had hid­den his gold, and he end­ed up in the penal camp,[6] where he died.

The water in the camp was not drink­able, and the pris­on­ers were at risk of dysen­tery, so they drank ​“a kind of unsweet­ened, bit­ter kind of strange tea,” and with it they were giv­en bread made with shav­ings [i.e., saw­dust]. In the evening they some­times had a slice of sala­mi or a piece of mar­garine with their bread. If some days they did­n’t work, they also received a lunch of boiled beets. The Ger­man Roma, who slept on bunk beds at the entrance to the block, used to get dou­ble the rations of the oth­er pris­on­ers; Val­dová’s father with sev­er­al oth­er men protest­ed against this, but the block chief beat them. So many peo­ple died of dysen­tery and oth­er dis­eases that four wag­ons of bod­ies were tak­en from their camp to the cre­ma­to­ria every day; among them were Bože­na Valdová’s grandparents.

After break­fast, the pris­on­ers went to work. The women most­ly repaired the roads and car­ried sand and oth­er mate­ri­als, while the men’s jobs includ­ed sort­ing the Jews’ belong­ings into piles on the days when the trans­ports arrived.[7] At first the moth­ers of young chil­dren stayed with them in the block; lat­er the chil­dren were in a kind of kinder­garten and their moth­ers had to go to work as well.

Bože­na Val­dová fell ill twice in the camp. When she got sca­bies, they put her in the sick bay where she had to lie naked and smeared with oint­ment wrapped only in a blan­ket. Then she got sick again, and had chills, which her moth­er cured her of by wrap­ping her up. One night, when she went to the end of the bar­rack where the bar­rels used as toi­lets were locat­ed, she saw a girl of about six­teen hang­ing there upside down, sus­pend­ed by her arms.[8] She also recalled how shak­en she was when a block chief bru­tal­ly beat a lit­tle boy in front of his moth­er sim­ply because he was cry­ing and could not be quieted.

Bože­na Val­dová left Auschwitz by trans­port to Ravens­brück. On the same day, her father was sent to Buchen­wald.[9] Her moth­er, who had unex­pect­ed­ly became preg­nant after four­teen years, gave birth to a baby girl in the camp who was only a few weeks old when the trans­ports sep­a­rat­ed the fam­i­ly. She and her baby died in the camp.

One day a load of heavy crates over­turned on Val­dová in Ravens­brück and she was tak­en uncon­scious to the infir­mary, where she was cared for by a nurse who spoke Czech. She recalled that the pris­on­ers there were promised that they would be freed if they agreed to be exper­i­ment­ed on. Instead, they all died. She was spared, prob­a­bly because she was young.

She was deport­ed from Ravens­brück to a camp near Ham­burg,[10] from which they were tak­en to clear the debris after the bomb­ing. A Pol­ish cell­mate over­heard the Ger­mans say­ing that the Amer­i­cans were already in Ham­burg; that woman man­aged to escape and send the Amer­i­cans to the camp to help. When the Ger­mans dis­cov­ered that she had escaped, they locked the pris­on­ers in the blocks and fled in a hur­ry, so that the women did not even notice that they had been unat­tend­ed for almost a day and a half. Then, after they were freed, they wept and faint­ed with hap­pi­ness and joy.

[1] Name not remembered.

[2] Trans­port on 22 August 1943. (ed.)

[3] The gyp­sy camp pris­on­ers remained in civil­ian clothes, on which they had cross­es paint­ed in red paint across their backs in the shape of the let­ter X. (ed.)

[4] Paul Wegen­er, a Ger­man Romany, was the block chief. (ed.)

[5] Paul Wegen­er’s mis­tress and deputy, real name Wan­da, set up a broth­el in the SS block. (ed.)

[6] In fact, the penal work divi­sion (Strafkom­panie). (ed.)

[7] Aufräu­mungskom­man­do, called ​“Cana­da” in prison par­lance. (ed.)

[8] A pun­ish­ment in which the vic­tim was hung by a rope or chain by his twist­ed arms from a ceil­ing beam so that he could not reach the floor with his feet (Pfahlbinden). (ed.)

[9] Trans­ports on 2 August 1944. (ed.)

[10] Most like­ly the Neuengamme con­cen­tra­tion camp near Ham­burg, which was lib­er­at­ed by Allied troops on 5 May 1945. (ed.)

Bože­na Val­dová returned home a month before her father. Not long after the war, she went to the cin­e­ma to see a film about Auschwitz, but she said it was a fairy tale that had noth­ing to do with real­i­ty. But the audi­ence cried, so when she start­ed laugh­ing provoca­tive­ly dur­ing the screen­ing, they called an ush­er to show her out. Out­side, she explained to him why she had laughed, after which he apol­o­gized profusely.