Eduard Holomek

Eduard Holomek’s father Fran­tišek (1885−1943÷44) worked in the glass­works in Kyjov as an assis­tant, while his moth­er Fran­tiš­ka (née Daňh­elová, 1885−1943÷44) was in ser­vice in the fam­i­ly of a Jew­ish butch­er named Stra­ch. They were paid for their work, but it was not enough for a fam­i­ly of eight, so the chil­dren most­ly went bare­foot. Eduard Holomek had three sis­ters and two broth­ers: Žan­ka (bap­tized Terezie, 1911−1943÷44), Šte­f­ka (bap­tized Rozálie, 1914−1943÷44), Anna (1920−1943÷44), Václav (1924−1943÷44) and Dra­hoslav (1926−1943÷44). The fam­i­ly had a wood­en house in Kyjov with a veran­da, a kitchen and a room. The chil­dren went to school, but the par­ents were illit­er­ate. Eduard got along well with his class­mates, and they used to come to his home to play foot­ball. Josef Prokop, an aca­d­e­m­ic painter, also vis­it­ed the Holomeks and paint­ed them, espe­cial­ly Eduard’s sis­ter Anna, who was beau­ti­ful. Eduard Holomek left school in 1936 and, like his father, began work­ing in the glassworks.

Every­thing began to dete­ri­o­rate with the arrival of Ger­man troops. Around 1941, his for­mer class­mate Cyril Dufek, from a Ger­man fam­i­ly, came to Eduard Holomek and told him that the Holomeks would be sent to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. Because he worked at the employ­ment office, he was able to arrange a job for Eduard in Vien­na, and thus an exemp­tion from the trans­port. Holomek was hes­i­tant because he had nev­er trav­elled by train before, so Cyril Dufek sent anoth­er class­mate with him to Hodonín, who helped him on the way and showed him which train to take.

When he reached the vil­lage of Enzes­feld, south of Vien­na,[1] he met his cousin Rudolf Daniel (born 1905), who had fled ear­li­er and was work­ing in the local muni­tions fac­to­ry [Enzes­felder Met­all­w­erke AG]. He start­ed to work there too, and even went to Kyjov for his younger broth­er Václav, so that he could get a job work and be saved, but his par­ents begged him to leave quick­ly because the gen­darmes were look­ing for him, so his broth­er Václav stayed at home.

After some time at the fac­to­ry, it was dis­cov­ered that both Eduard Holomek and Rudolf Daniel were Romani and they were tak­en to the Maria-Lanzen­dorf camp, where they spent about a year.

They received bread with hot water in the morn­ing, [turnip] soup at noon, bread and a piece of Kunerol, a but­ter sub­sti­tute [like mar­garine]. There were about thir­ty or forty of them in the room, all Czechs. There were bunk beds all around the perime­ter. The pris­on­ers sup­port­ed each oth­er and kept togeth­er; if one could­n’t work, the oth­ers worked for him. It was a labour camp, and peo­ple in it most often died of star­va­tion or dysen­tery. The guards were most­ly Croats and were cru­el; only one – an Aus­tri­an known as Panen­ka – did not beat anyone.

There were peo­ple of many nation­al­i­ties in the camp, main­ly Rus­sians and Greeks; the Rus­sians were in a spe­cial prison in the com­pound. Eduard Holomek then lost con­tact with his cousin, who was in anoth­er block. He worked for a farmer and unloaded stones from the train at the sta­tion in ​“Majd­linek” [Mödling (ed.)]. He and a friend escaped from there when the guard and his dog were on the oth­er side of the sta­tion. First they went to Vien­na and from there they want­ed to go to Bře­clav. How­ev­er, there was a pass­port con­trol at the sta­tion before Bře­clav, so they got off and walked through the for­est to Stará Bře­clav. In the for­est they met a Ger­man with a pis­tol, who forced them to go back to ​“Per­ni­tal” [Bern­hard­sthal in Low­er Aus­tria] to the gen­darmerie sta­tion, where they stat­ed that they were work­ing in Stará Bře­clav for a farmer. They were not believed and after a week of inves­ti­ga­tion were sent to a prison in Vien­na. Eduard Holomek tried to go under the name Oldřich Eduard Portyš, but it did not help him and after a few months they end­ed up again in the Maria-Lanzen­dorf camp. The SS asked them if they had been there before, but Eduard Holomek denied it, so they began to give him a severe beat­ing. He con­fessed only when the oth­er pris­on­ers came home from work and a Romani man advised him. He was put in soli­tary con­fine­ment, where he was with­out food for thir­teen days, being giv­en water to drink once every three days. Then he start­ed work again, remain­ing there until the sum­mer of 1944, when they were tak­en to work for var­i­ous com­pa­nies. There was a short­age of work­ers, so they assigned him to the brick­lay­ers, from which he escaped in Novem­ber 1944, tak­ing a train across the bor­der. He reached his cousin Roz­i­na Holomková (1903−1989) in the vil­lage of Neso­vice, where he hid until the end of the war.

The rest of the fam­i­ly – hia father, moth­er and all the sib­lings – were deport­ed[2] straight to Auschwitz. His sis­ter Anna had pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried a non-Romani cloth mer­chant and worked as a maid in Brno, which might have saved her, but when she heard that the fam­i­ly was being round­ed up for trans­port to the col­lec­tion point in the Brno slaugh­ter­house, she fol­lowed them and shared their fate. None of them returned.

[1] Judi­cial Dis­trict of Pot­ten­stein in Low­er Aus­tria. (ed.)

[2] Trans­port of 19 March 1943. (ed.)