Jan Ištván (1921)

Jan Ištván was born in the vil­lage of Letovice near Kunštát. His father Antonín Josef Ištván worked as a knife grinder and umbrel­la mak­er. His moth­er, Marie Jana Ištvánová, ped­dled cur­tains and lace, which she used to buy at a work­shop in the château in Letovice. The fam­i­ly lived in two vovered wag­ons, in which they trav­elled around the vil­lages from Boskovice to Kunštát. They always stayed in one of the larg­er vil­lages for two to four weeks while his father plied his trade. The height of the wag­ons was sev­en and five metres, both rich­ly dec­o­rat­ed with carv­ings and colour­ful paint­ings. Ištván recalls that they were not pover­ty-strick­en and did not have to go beg­ging like some of the oth­er Roma; they lived contentedly.

When Jan Ištván start­ed school, the fam­i­ly set­tled in Kunštát, where his father had right of abode. They lived in two inter­con­nect­ed and well fur­nished cov­ered wag­ons. His broth­ers Josef and Bohouš worked in the cart­ing busi­ness there. Jan Ištván worked for the Schmidt com­pa­ny, for which he built the road and bridge in Kunštát. The Ger­mans reg­is­tered the fam­i­ly [after the occu­pa­tion] in 1939. In the autumn of that year, Kohn, a local Jew­ish tex­tile mer­chant, warned Jan Ištván’s father that ​“things were bad” and that they should flee. He said the mer­chant him­self fled, but the Išt­van fam­i­ly did not know where to go, so they stayed. Until 1942 they lived rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful­ly, although they were reg­is­tered as a Roma fam­i­ly. It was not until August 1942 that the gen­darmes arrived, took note of every­thing and went away again.[1] Then they came again and the sit­u­a­tion repeat­ed itself, and they were told to pack up, as they were to be evict­ed. The third time the gen­darmes arrived with vehi­cles and took them to Hodonín [to the camp].[2]

On arrival at the camp they had to wash and were assigned accom­mo­da­tion. Food was scarce. For the first month or two they had enough rations, but lat­er they were often hun­gry. For break­fast they were giv­en rye cof­fee and a piece of bread; the main meal was a stew that they called žula. The con­di­tions in the camp grad­u­al­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed, and var­i­ous infec­tions began to spread among the pris­on­ers, although a doc­tor who was ​“half Ger­man half Czech” came to the camp.[3] There were attempts to escape. Pepík (i.e. Josef) Daniel and some oth­ers tried to escape, but failed. They were caught and pun­ished by being beat­en and placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment.[4] The first pris­on­ers who died were buried in the ceme­tery at Čer­novice. Jan Ištván remem­bered a Romani woman who died of pneu­mo­nia. She was tak­en in a cof­fin by horse-drawn car­riage to Čer­novice. Lat­er on, how­ev­er, [after the typhus epi­dem­ic broke out] they banned the bur­ial of pris­on­ers from the camp, and a bur­ial site was cre­at­ed in the for­est near the camp [known as Žalov]. The gen­darmes and the game­keep­er chose a place in the for­est, and the pris­on­ers, among them Ján Ištván, cut down trees, dug a pit, and enclosed the site with a wire fence.

Even teenage chil­dren had to work in the camp; boys between the ages of twelve and four­teen went to the vil­lage where a stream was being cul­vert­ed. Every­one had to work, regard­less of the weath­er. When the old­er gen­darmes were super­vis­ing, they were allowed to rest occa­sion­al­ly, but the young gen­darmes were strict. Jan Ištván worked in a quar­ry where they broke stone for road build­ing, and some­times the gen­darmes chose him to help them reload some goods from the train. After Christ­mas [1942], he went for this pur­pose with two oth­er pris­on­ers and two Czech gen­darmes to the sta­tion at Ned­vědice and then on to the sta­tion at Tišnov, where they remained unat­tend­ed for a while. Jan Ištván took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to escape. He reached Lipův­ka in the snow and frost. He stopped in front of a local pub, but did not enter it because he had no mon­ey.[5] He was approached by an elder­ly man with a cart, prob­a­bly a carter or a peas­ant, who asked him if he was hun­gry and bought him soup and bread. Ištván spent the night in the woods above Lipůvka.

He set out for Brno to look for friends from the Daniel or Junek fam­i­lies, but they had all been interned, so he head­ed to Vyškov to find the Bystřický fam­i­ly. On his way he tried to be incon­spic­u­ous, hid­ing in the woods dur­ing the day. At that time, the Bystřický fam­i­ly lived in the local Jew­ish ceme­tery. [Mar­tin] Bystřický worked as a carter and had three chil­dren, Jan, Ton­da and Ale­na, aged between six and eight. He hid Jan Ištván in his home. After a few weeks, Bystřický met a local plain­clothes gen­darme who warned him that they were going to be tak­en away, and advised him to flee. So the fam­i­ly and Ištván quick­ly set off for Slo­va­kia, where they hoped con­di­tions would be bet­ter. It was Feb­ru­ary, Ištván car­ried lit­tle Ton­da Bystřický on his back, and they spent the night in the woods. All the time Ištván had his ​“Kennkarte” iden­ti­ty doc­u­ment with him; it was not been tak­en away from him even in the camp. Bystřick­ý’s wife, Richtro­vá[6] had one too, so they went togeth­er to buy food in the vil­lage near to where they were spend­ing the night. When they were cook­ing the pota­toes they had bought in the for­est, two Ger­man gen­darmes and anoth­er six or sev­en per­sons in civil­ian clothes appeared. They were all arrest­ed and tak­en to a barn in the vil­lage. The next day they were tak­en to the prison in Zdounky. After a few weeks, they were trans­ferred from there to the work­house in Brno.[7] Ištván was there with his future wife Bože­na and her then preg­nant sis­ter Anto­nia Vrbová (née Bystřická). They were released in Brno. Ištván believed that their release may have been relat­ed to Antonie Vrbová’s preg­nan­cy. They sub­se­quent­ly returned to Vyškov, but not back to the Jew­ish ceme­tery; they found hous­ing in near­by Nos­a­lovice, where Ištván lat­er worked as a carter.

[1] It was prob­a­bly a so-called inven­to­ry of ​“gyp­sies, gyp­sy mis­ce­genates and per­sons roam­ing in the gyp­sy man­ner”, and its imple­men­ta­tion date was 2 August 1942.

[2] 3 August 1942. (ed.)

[3] Med­ical ser­vices in the camp were pro­vid­ed by Dr. Josef Habanec, a doc­tor from Olešnice, who came to the camp once every 14 days to exam­ine and check the pris­on­ers. After the out­break of the typhus epi­dem­ic, a Jew­ish doc­tor, Alfred Mílek, who spoke flu­ent Czech and Ger­man, was called to the camp. (ed.)

[4] Of the pris­on­ers named Josef Daniel list­ed in Nečas’s pub­lished records, only Josef (Lala) Daniel (born 1907, Osla­vany) escaped on 19 Decem­ber 1942 and again on 28 March 1943. Each time he was caught and returned. On 21 August 1943, he was deport­ed to Auschwitz II-Birke­nau. (ed.)

[5] The For­man­ka pub, whose his­to­ry dates back to 1894, is still in oper­a­tion today. It is locat­ed on the Brno road; Lipův­ka (Blan­sko dis­trict) is about 30 km from Hodonín. (ed.)

[6] First name not given.

[7] Now known as Káznice, the for­mer pen­i­ten­tiary at Cejl in Brno. (ed.)

None of Jan Ištván’s fam­i­ly sur­vived the war. His father died at the Hodonín camp, and his moth­er and six sib­lings were deport­ed to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.