František Vrba

Fran­tišek Vrba was born in Zbuzany near Prague in a cov­ered wag­on. He had twelve sib­lings, sev­en of whom died of nat­ur­al caus­es. His father, Fer­di­nand Vrba,[1] was blind and sup­port­ed him­self by play­ing the accor­dion in pubs; in addi­tion, he was a horse trad­er. His moth­er, Jana Vrba, née Tichá,[2] belonged to the trav­el­ling com­mu­ni­ty and met her future hus­band at the horse mar­ket, where they used to go with oth­er trav­ellers, the Verd­cha­jn fam­i­ly. Even as a young boy, Fran­tišek Vrba learned from his grand­fa­ther how to judge a horse cor­rect­ly and make a prof­it when trad­ing; the dif­fer­ence in price could be as much as fifty crowns and that could buy ​“lit­ka”, he says. [Accord­ing to the sur­vivor, it was a slang term for alco­hol ​“among the horse traders and in the vil­lage (…); the men would go for ​‘lit­ka’ or send the kids with a jug (for beer)” (ed.)]. From spring to autumn, the Vrba fam­i­ly would trav­el in a cov­ered wag­on, most­ly through the vil­lages around Klad­no towards the town of Radotín.[3] Their win­ter camp­ing place was at Pankrác near the Mich­le church [prob­a­bly the Church of the Nativ­i­ty of the Vir­gin Mary in Prague 4 – Mich­le], where oth­er trav­el­ling fam­i­lies also gath­ered – he men­tions the Chadrabs, Klo­ces and Vin­tras by name. He says that the trav­ellers were called chále where­as they were actu­al­ly prás­to. [“Cha­lo” is the term for a trav­eller who is not Roma, ​“prás­to” is a Roma who is rit­u­al­ly unclean, exclud­ed – i.e. it is a com­men­tary on Roma identity.]

[1] Born 1904. (ed.)

[2] Born 1908, Doksy. (ed.)

[3] Today Prague 16.

Fran­tišek Vrba knows more about what it was like dur­ing the war from the sto­ries his moth­er and father used to tell him about the past. When the extend­ed fam­i­ly gath­ered, the aunts and uncles would tell sto­ries and cry, but as a child he was not allowed to lis­ten to these con­ver­sa­tions.[1]

He remem­bers the camp [the so-called gyp­sy camp in Lety u Písku], how his blind father could not move around on his own and how Vrba’s sis­ters[2] took him to the toi­let. They would go swim­ming en masse in the pond; the young chil­dren had to stay at the edge, while the old­er ones were allowed to go fur­ther into the water. Vrba’s moth­er worked in the laun­dry. The women tried to sup­ple­ment the children’s diet with baked pota­toes from the kitchen. The small pota­toes that the women pris­on­ers did not want to peel were thrown into the ash­es on the stove and then secret­ly giv­en to the children.

After their release from the camp,[3] they lived at Ari­zona in Jinon­ice from 1943 to 1944. Fran­tišek Vrba’s moth­er worked as a kitchen man­ag­er in the can­teen at Wal­tro­v­ka [4] after her release from the camp.

[1] It was one of the prin­ci­ples of polite behav­iour in the Czech Roma com­mu­ni­ty thatchil­dren were encour­aged to respect their elders and it was improp­er for them to take part in the seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion of adults.

[2] Jose­fa (born 1936) and Růže­na (born 1935) were interned with the fam­i­ly. (ed.)

[3] The fam­i­ly was released from the camp in Lety on 8 Sep­tem­ber 1942. (ed.)

[4] The for­mer engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny Wal­ter, a. s., in Prague 5 — Jinon­ice, pro­duc­ing first motor­cy­cles and motor tri­cy­cles, lat­er also auto­mo­biles and air­craft engines.

Fran­tišek Vrba worked with hors­es after the war. He was approached, he says, by Ven­ca [Václav] Kotek to help them organ­ise a the­atre carneval.[1] For this pur­pose he built a five-metre long float and took part in the carneval as a coach­man with a team of horses.

Around 1960 the fam­i­ly vis­it­ed Lety u Písku. They went there in two cars. Every­thing was over­grown and the pig farm[2] was not there yet. When Vrba’s moth­er was describ­ing to them where each camp build­ing stood, she faint­ed; her daugh­ters had to revive her. Then they went there again at their moth­er’s request, but she was already very ill, and they did­n’t even get out of the car.

Lat­er he learned from the media that they were ren­o­vat­ing it [the memo­r­i­al], so he went there him­self with his broth­er. He cursed the fact that a pig farm had been allowed to be built there.

[1] The Ven­ca Kotek men­tioned by the eye­wit­ness was a stage­hand, lat­er actor and man­ag­er of the Jára Cim­r­man The­atre in Prague, Václav Kotek (1953−2019). The pil­grim­age refers to the The­atre Carneval that took place on Stř­elecký ostrov [Shoot­ers’ Island] in Prague in 1985; for more about this carneval see https://​www​.divadel​ni​-noviny​.cz/​d​i​v​a​d​l​o​-1918 – 2018‑9%20 (in Czech).

[2] In 1972 – 1974, a large-capac­i­ty pig farm with ten sheds was built in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the for­mer camp site, and three more halls were added in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, extend­ing into the south­east cor­ner of the for­mer camp.