Eleonora Kosová

The Bystřický fam­i­ly lived in Vyškov; the sur­vivor said it was in the Jew­ish ceme­tery. Her father Mar­tin Bystřický pro­vid­ed for the fam­i­ly as a horse trad­er and carter, her moth­er’s name was Antonie, née Richtro­vá. In 1925 their first daugh­ter Antonie was born, two years lat­er Bože­na. The eldest son, Antonín, was born in 1933, fol­lowed a year lat­er by his broth­er Jan. She said the neigh­bours in Vyškov treat­ed them per­fect­ly. Eleono­ra, Antonie and broth­er Antonín had their father’s pale skin, and Eleono­ra also inher­it­ed her father’s blue eyes.

One evening in 1942, her par­ents began pack­ing their belong­ings, say­ing that the local gen­darme had urged them to run away, oth­er­wise they would have to go to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. They left at night, then walked through the woods and along field paths, and final­ly took refuge in the for­est around Buchlov. Her uncle Adolf Richtr and her father’s cousin Jakub Richtr from Vyškov fled togeth­er with the Bystřickýs. 

One spring or sum­mer morn­ing in 1943, while they were spend­ing the night close to the road, they were noticed by the dri­ver of a horse-drawn cart. He prob­a­bly thought they were par­ti­sans, because not long after­wards the fam­i­ly was sur­round­ed by the Gestapo and Czech police. The moth­er, who had just returned from shop­ping in the vil­lage, want­ed to hide behind a tree with five-year-old Eleono­ra in her arms, but one of the uni­formed men, who report­ed­ly spoke Czech bad­ly, spot­ted them and start­ed swear­ing at them and mak­ing dan­ger­ous threats. The fam­i­ly was then tak­en to the prison in Zdounky. It was a makeshift prison con­sist­ing of one large room where the warder or turnkey and his wife, who wore a Mora­vian-Slo­vak cos­tume, lived. They want­ed to sep­a­rate the detained Roma, by plac­ing the men and boys, and women and girls in dif­fer­ent rooms. Lit­tle Eleono­ra was sup­posed to be placed among the boys who were as small as she was, but she burst into tears, slipped under the police offi­cers’ hands and refused to let go of her moth­er, so in the end she was allowed to stay with her. Eleono­ra remem­bered how they were giv­en pota­to goulash in mugs every day, but the food smelled of soap, which she said was per­haps grat­ed into it delib­er­ate­ly. Also interned with them in Zdounky were par­ti­sans who had been hid­ing in the woods like them. 

After about two or three months[1] the Bystřick­ýs were tak­en to the work­house – a prison at Cejl in Brno. Here they gained pro­tec­tion because their father had gone to school with local Pro­tec­torate police­men in Vyškov. The sur­vivor said the police inspec­tor [Kle­ment] Boda, togeth­er with [Oldřich] Nejezch­le­ba and [Rudolf] Veselý put their files at the bot­tom so that it would not be their turn when deci­sion was tak­en about who would be deport­ed to Auschwitz, who would be placed in anoth­er con­cen­tra­tion camp, and who would be released. Eleono­ra’s moth­er and her sis­ter and broth­er were all dark­er-skinned, so they were hid­den in a cell that the Gestapo sup­pos­ed­ly did not know about. Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, she said, were on show. So she came face to face with Detec­tive Chief Inspec­tor [Franz] Herzig, of the Ger­man crim­i­nal police, and she still remem­bered him grab­bing her by the ear­lobe and refer­ring to her in Ger­man as ​“no Gyp­sy.” The afore­men­tioned police offi­cers then vouched for them, say­ing that the fam­i­ly had always lived prop­er­ly, nev­er cheat­ed, and the father had always worked. Thanks to that, they were able to release them in 1944. 

[1] She could not remem­ber pre­cise­ly, say­ing she was very young at the time.

She said the Czech police offi­cers [Oldřich] Nejezch­le­ba and [Rudolf] Veselý con­tin­ued to work for the crim­i­nal police. Eleono­ra Kosová mar­ried Bruno Kos, who was from a Jew­ish fam­i­ly and received a dis­abil­i­ty pen­sion as a result of his impris­on­ment in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.

Eleono­ra Kosová first worked as a nurse, and after 1989 she ran a fash­ion shop in Prostějov.