Jan Růžička

Jan Růžič­ka lived in the fam­i­ly house with his moth­er Emílie and his eight sib­lings named Josef, Bože­na, Kristý­na, Karel, Jar­da, Eda, Fran­tišek and Emílie. Their father Vin­cenc died when Jan was four years old. They earned their liv­ing as farm workers.

In 1940 Jan Růžič­ka was already doing forced labour in Aus­tria in the Met­all-Werke muni­tions fac­to­ry. He said they sab­o­taged the work. He fled from there to his home in the vil­lage of Štěměchy, where he hid, and Dr. Hůl­ka[1] secret­ly treat­ed his injured leg. He was then arrest­ed by the Ger­man police in Jihla­va, where his wife and two chil­dren had already been detained. They were put on a train and tak­en to Brno, where they were stripped and their hair was cut. They spent two days with­out clothes. They were then loaded onto a train at three o’clock in the morn­ing; the trans­port left at three o’clock in the after­noon for Olo­mouc, where the wag­ons, twelve in all, were attached to an express train. 

No one told them where they were going, but Růžič­ka states that they knew.[2] After arriv­ing at the con­cen­tra­tion camp in Auschwitz, the guards drove them off the train like cat­tle. Their lug­gage was con­fis­cat­ed, they were tak­en to a large block where over three days their names were writ­ten down, and they were pho­tographed and fin­ger­print­ed; they were allowed to keep their clothes. They spent four weeks in quar­an­tine before the fam­i­ly was housed in block 24. The bar­racks had con­crete floors, the walls were made of wood, and a fur­nace flue stretched along the block. The pris­on­ers slept on bunk beds. There were two toi­lets for the whole block, for which there were queues and no one was allowed to stay there for more than a minute. The block lead­ers were Czechs, Ger­mans, and Rus­sians, and the Roma worked as room lead­ers. There were also crim­i­nals among them. Jan Růžič­ka said that ​“as soon as the gate closed, there was no excep­tion, black and green” [the green tri­an­gle on the cloth­ing was worn by con­vict­ed crim­i­nals and felons, the black tri­an­gle was used by the Ger­mans to des­ig­nate the so-called aso­cials, which at first includ­ed the Roma]. Roll calls were twice a day, and if some­one was miss­ing, the pris­on­ers had to stand until the num­ber agreed or the dogs found the fugi­tive. Those who could, helped those who could not walk, sup­port­ing them or car­ry­ing them in their arms. They marched to work five abreast and music played on the way there and back; musi­cians were excused from work. The pris­on­ers worked in the camp, con­struct­ing sew­ers. Jan Růžič­ka said that he worked ​“on the gassing” [in the gas cham­bers]; when the trans­port arrived, 200 Jews were set aside and the rest went ​“into the gassing” [into the gas cham­bers]. Some of the guards behaved bru­tal­ly, rou­tine­ly knock­ing a man to the ground, putting a pick­axe on him and stand­ing on the han­dle; he said that some­thing cracked in the man, and he died.

They were giv­en food three times a day, tea made from alder leaves or clover in the morn­ing to increase their thirst, oth­er­wise they were giv­en beet soup or rot­ten pota­toes unpeeled. They took a litre dur­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion, but often half of it was spilled. The pris­on­ers had access to a can­teen where they could buy beet­root, snails and fruit juice. There was plen­ty of mon­ey, he says, some peo­ple hand­ed it over, some did­n’t. He man­aged to steal a few rings. They did not receive parcels, but some got food from the civil­ian work­men who came to work in the camp.

Diar­rhoea was ram­pant in the camp, and Růžič­ka con­tract­ed typhus, after which he weighed 38 kilo­grams. Then, in the hos­pi­tal, he said he man­aged to cure peo­ple of phleg­mon, in which their flesh fell off their bod­ies, their lar­ynx­es were vis­i­ble, and they had pus all over their bod­ies.[3] Růžič­ka said that he washed them with ​“foam­ing water” and thus drew out the pus. When [Josef] Men­gele found out, he asked who had cured the patients. He learned from the Pol­ish block super­vi­sor Ste­fan that it was Růžič­ka. He want­ed to know what he did in civil­ian life. Although Růžič­ka replied that he was a work­er, Men­gele decid­ed that he would be a doc­tor. Jan Růžič­ka assist­ed at autop­sies and their evenings were spent with the ​“pflegern” (nurs­es).[4]

The high­est mor­tal­i­ty rate was at work; in his work team of one hun­dred peo­ple, four to five pris­on­ers died every day. He said that the cru­ellest moments he expe­ri­enced were in Auschwitz at the begin­ning and then in Ell­rich. He remem­bers the flea-infest­ed clothes, and then they even took the clothes away. Nobody believed they would ever go home.

Once, when eight or ten boys escaped from Auschwitz, six of them were found and brought back. All the pris­on­ers had to go to a roll call where the escapees were tor­tured by dogs. When the kapos only hit them light­ly, they had to lie down and the SS men beat them with a bull whip stud­ded with nails. Růžič­ka once received eighty lash­es, after which he lay on his stom­ach for three weeks and was scarred for life. 

From Auschwitz he was trans­port­ed to the con­cen­tra­tion camps of Buchen­wald, Dora, Harzun­gen, Ell­rich and Sach­sen­hausen. At Buchen­wald they were quar­an­tined and did not go to work, they just took the con­tents of the toi­lets to the fields three or four kilo­me­tres away. He spent eight months in the Dora camp. They were herd­ed into a tun­nel 32 metres high and 20 metres wide, in which he spent six months with 35,000 or 40,000 pris­on­ers; they dug a tun­nel into the rock and in the end there were only about a thou­sand or twelve hun­dred pris­on­ers left. When they were brought out, he saw noth­ing – and then when he saw the yel­low flow­ers in the mead­ow, it was as if he was see­ing the whole world. He also worked in a tun­nel in the Harzun­gen con­cen­tra­tion camps near Sach­sen­hausen, as well as ​“Ehrlich”,[5] where they went to work in wag­ons in a ten-kilo­me­tre-long tun­nel. The sys­tem con­sist­ed of 500 clothed men work­ing in the tun­nel and 500 naked pris­on­ers wait­ing in the bar­racks. They walked bare­foot on grav­el for half a kilo­me­tre to go to the toi­let, and they wait­ed three hours out­side the tun­nel in the rain and freez­ing cold for the change of shift.

Then they were locked in wag­ons for a week, after which they were tak­en to ​“Cela”,[6] where they were lib­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can army on April 15, 1945.

Jan Růžič­ka described the ela­tion after the lib­er­a­tion. The Amer­i­can sol­diers offered to pun­ish the SS mem­bers on behalf of the pris­on­ers, but they told them they would not behave in the same way as the Ger­mans. So the SS men were locked up and guard­ed by Hun­gar­i­an pris­on­ers for a month. Then the SS men were liq­ui­dat­ed.[7] From the first of May, the pris­on­ers had out­ings, which were in great demand, so there was con­fu­sion out­side the office where the Amer­i­cans wrote their names down. Růžič­ka lined the peo­ple up, and when a sol­dier, a Czech-Amer­i­can, noticed this, he told Růžič­ka he could help them find food for the pris­on­ers. There were about 5 or 6 of them, and they went around the sur­round­ing vil­lages and con­fis­cat­ed food. At each farm they showed a paper and peo­ple had to give them food. One peas­ant woman said she had noth­ing, but when they went into the cel­lar they found a large sup­ply of tinned food, but­ter, and so on. The Amer­i­can Czech ordered them to destroy it.

[1] First name not given.

[2] Trans­port to Auschwitz on 7 March 1943. (ed.)

[3] This was noma (can­crum oris), which occurred in chil­dren and ado­les­cents only in the gyp­sy camp. The dis­ease began with a dark blis­ter on the oral mucosa, which rapid­ly enlarged and led to tis­sue break­down. A spe­cial ward for noma patients was set up on Men­gele’s orders in Block 22, with Pro­fes­sor Berthold Epstein, M.D., from Prague, as head physi­cian. (ed.)

[4] The autop­sies of the pris­on­ers were per­formed by the Hun­gar­i­an doc­tor Mik­lós Nyis­zli; his mem­oirs were pub­lished in Eng­lish as Auschwitz: A Doc­tor’s Eye­wit­ness Account, Arcade Pub­lish­ing, 2007. (ed.)

[5] Harzun­gen was actu­al­ly a branch of the Mit­tel­bau I (Dora) con­cen­tra­tion camp. There was a branch of the same camp at Ell­rich, not Ehrlich. (ed.)

[6] Prob­a­bly Zel­la-Mehlis in Thuringia.

[7] It is not stat­ed how.

When Jan Růžič­ka returned home on July 17, 1945, he found that every­thing had been stolen from them. His broth­er Karel, whom he had last seen in Auschwitz, also arrived. He had no news of his wife and chil­dren. His wife even­tu­al­ly returned about two months lat­er, but alone — and it was not long before she died.