Jan Ištvan (1924)

Jan Išt­van lived with his moth­er and younger broth­er Fran­tišek in the vil­lage of Doubrav­ice [nad Svi­tavou]. His moth­er Kar­la Išt­vanová did casu­al work, such as in a brick­yard, and was lat­er employed in the Sfinx kitchen­ware fac­to­ry in Brno.[1]

His father was not Roma and did not live with the fam­i­ly, but he sup­port­ed his son in his stud­ies. Jan Išt­van attend­ed pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, and then a one-year non-com­pul­so­ry course, the so-called ​“fourth grade” of sec­ondary school, at Svitáv­ka. Lat­er, when he was appren­ticed as a machine fit­ter at the Mechana auto­mat­ic lathe fac­to­ry in Brno, his father took him in. He remem­bered that the own­er, the engi­neer Ander­le,[2] had a Ger­man wife and him­self joined the Ger­man com­mu­ni­ty lat­er, but he was a good man. After a three-year appren­tice­ship he returned to his moth­er and broth­er in Doubrav­ice, where they lived, he said, in the munic­i­pal poor­house. Even before the war, he felt some dis­crim­i­na­tion at school and his moth­er at work because of the colour of their skin. 

[1] The fac­to­ry was destroyed at the end of the war, and is now replaced by the Sfinx shop­ping centre.

[2] IKarel Ander­le and Co, spol. s.r.o. Mechana. (ed.)

Jan Išt­van recalls that when he was four­teen years old, the gen­darmes came to his school to ask him to pick up his Gyp­sy iden­ti­ty card in Doubrav­ice, but he did not go there because he had a Kennkarte. He says that some kind of inven­to­ry[1] was made by the gen­darmes on the orders of the Pro­tec­torate author­i­ties in the sum­mer or autumn of 1942; it then served the Ger­mans as a basis for select­ing peo­ple [for transports].

In March 1943, the fam­i­ly was tak­en by a prison van to Brno to the col­lec­tion point in a slaugh­ter­house. They were only allowed to take the bare neces­si­ties. Jan Išt­van was nine­teen years old at the time. After four days, he was told that he was free to leave; he believed that it was thanks to the inter­ces­sion of the engi­neer Ander­le, for whom he had worked. How­ev­er, he refused to leave his moth­er and younger broth­er, and so they were tak­en in cat­tle trucks to [the con­cen­tra­tion camp] at Auschwitz, where SS offi­cers with dogs and bull­whips were wait­ing for them. They were tak­en on trucks to the entrance gate of [Auschwitz II-]Birkenau and all of them were reg­is­tered again. They spent the first night crammed into a block with no beds, and the next day they were tat­tooed with a num­ber and herd­ed into the so-called Gyp­sy Camp. It was cold, and Jan István recalled a pile of dead bod­ies and a group of light­ly-dressed pris­on­ers har­nessed to a wag­on car­ry­ing wood, with the kapos urg­ing them on by beat­ing them.

For the first fort­night, the fam­i­lies were quar­an­tined and stayed in the blocks togeth­er. The day always began with a roll call, when every­one had to line up in rows of ten and wait for the Block­äl­teste to count them and report to the SS man. If the num­bers did not agree, the count had to be repeat­ed. The roll calls were thus long and dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly for the old­er pris­on­ers and chil­dren. Those who col­lapsed from exhaus­tion were fin­ished, Jan Išt­van said.

The pris­on­ers were giv­en unsweet­ened cof­fee in the morn­ing, beet or kohlra­bi soup or beet and pota­to soup at noon, a piece of bread in the evening and a piece of liv­er­wurst or sim­i­lar twice a week. Only pris­on­ers who had a func­tion (Block­äl­teste, Stuben­di­enst, Vorar­beit­er, kapo) were bet­ter off, as well as those who worked in the kitchen and occa­sion­al­ly man­aged to steal some­thing. Pris­on­ers also stole from the so-called Kana­da ware­house , which sort­ed things out of the lug­gage of peo­ple brought in by trans­ports. Išt­van recalls that a gold ring was worth one loaf of bread, and a wool sweater could be exchanged for half a loaf of bread.

Because he had stat­ed on arrival that he was a lock­smith by pro­fes­sion, he was trans­ferred to the main Auschwitz camp in April with oth­er crafts­men and young pris­on­ers.[2] Most of them then worked in the sand pit, with stones, or on con­struc­tion sites.

He was unable to say good­bye to his moth­er and broth­er before he left Birke­nau; his moth­er was in the sick bay and he could not get to her. Lat­er he learned that when the Gyp­sy Camp was cleared before the Sovi­et army arrived, the adult pris­on­ers were tak­en away in trans­ports, but the chil­dren had to remain there. His moth­er want­ed to stay in the camp with Fran­tišek and the oth­er chil­dren who had been entrust­ed to her by oth­er women, so she went to the gas cham­ber with them.

In the main camp at Auschwitz, the Roma were no longer sep­a­rat­ed from the oth­er pris­on­ers, nor were they sep­a­rat­ed at Buchen­wald, where Jan Išt­van was tak­en a year lat­er.[3] He spent three weeks in quar­an­tine at Buchen­wald, then was deport­ed to Dora and then to Harzun­gen.[4] He worked in the under­ground fac­to­ry where V‑1s and V‑2s were assem­bled.[5] Lat­er he was tak­en to a camp in Ell­rich, where con­di­tions were very bad. He became ill there and was giv­en injec­tions. After his recov­ery, he con­sid­ered it for­tu­nate that he was trans­ferred again to Harzun­gen. By that time the front was approach­ing, so they were giv­en a quar­ter loaf of bread and a piece of mar­garine and went on what was called a death march, i.e. they retreat­ed from the front under the super­vi­sion of the SS. Dur­ing the day they walked along the byways, and at night they hid in stacks or barns. Those who fell from hunger or exhaus­tion were shot. When the front approached, the SS men, fol­lowed by the Volkssturm, fled, let­ting the pris­on­ers go free. Jan Išt­van recalls that he remained sit­ting in a ditch by the road for some time. An SS man on a motor­cy­cle passed by and asked him what this meant, where the guard was. When he replied that he was gone, the Ger­man pulled out a pis­tol and point­ed it at him, but then he waved his hand and left with­out fir­ing a shot. The next moment Amer­i­can sol­diers were com­ing up the road in jeeps.

The Amer­i­cans gath­ered the for­mer pris­on­ers in a near­by vil­lage, and com­mis­sioned the may­or to house them. Išt­van stayed with a bak­er’s fam­i­ly for about six weeks and was treat­ed well. Then he was trans­ferred to the Sovi­et occu­pa­tion zone, spent some time in Magde­burg, and from there they took trucks to Prague.

[1] Accord­ing to Act No. ¹¹⁷⁄₁₉₂₇ Coll. on Itin­er­ant Gyp­sies of 14 July 1927.

[2] This hap­pened either on 4 or 12 April 1943. (ed.)

[3] Trans­port of 15 April 1944. (ed.)

[4] A branch of the Mit­tel­bau I con­cen­tra­tion camp near Nord­hausen, where he was held from 11 May 1944. (ed.)

[5] V‑1 and Aggre­gate 4 (V‑2) missiles.

After the war, Jan Išt­van returned to his father, who was very moved, although they were not very close. When he told him that he want­ed to study more, his father gave him a deposit book with a linked deposit, from which he with­drew mon­ey to study at an indus­tri­al school. He said it was only then that he final­ly began to live a nor­mal and peace­ful life.