Josef Jelínek

Josef Jelínek was born into a fam­i­ly of black­smiths. They had a cot­tage of cob bricks and a forge.[1] Josef was the youngest of six sib­lings; he attend­ed the pri­ma­ry school in Strážnice and did three grades of sec­ondary school. His class­mates often taunt­ed him for being a ​“gyp­sy” and even the teach­ers did not treat him well. He was not accept­ed for fur­ther study, so he began to work in his father’s forge. They made rail­road nails, spikes, etc., for the Tomáš mine in Ratíškovice.

[1] The cot­tage stood in the Roma set­tle­ment in Strážnice near the Skalice Gate. (ed.)

Josef Jelínek had been liv­ing with his fiancée and nine-month-old son for only a month when on 15 March 1943, at mid­night, he was dragged out of bed by a gen­darme by the name of Vedra[1] and two men in leather coats. With­out giv­ing him a chance to say good­bye, they took him to the sta­tion, where he was reunit­ed with his entire fam­i­ly in a rail­way wag­on. They spent the night in the wag­on, guard­ed by a Ger­man sol­dier with a machine gun; there were 50 of them in there and only one buck­et in the cor­ner as a toi­let. The next day they reached Olo­mouc. They were tak­en by goods lor­ry to the old the­atre.[2] They were guard­ed there by the gen­darme J. Zezu­la from Petrov. On the fourth day they had their heads shaved and a card­board sign with a num­ber put around their necks, and were then tak­en to the sta­tion where the train was already stand­ing. It stopped in Ostra­va, where they were giv­en a buck­et of water; by that time they had not eat­en for sev­en days. Every­one on the train was cry­ing and com­fort­ing them­selves with the fact that they might be tak­en to the Ukraine to work.

They reached their des­ti­na­tion in the after­noon, and had to line up in ten abreast and march into the camp [Auschwitz II-Birke­nau]. They had to strip naked (women, men and chil­dren togeth­er) in a build­ing marked Waschraum [wash­room] and immerse them­selves com­plete­ly in tubs; their skin turned red and burned like fire. Then they had to stand on a stool out­side and pris­on­ers shaved off all their body hair. The women in par­tic­u­lar were ashamed and cried; sev­er­al were beat­en with cables by the SS. They were tat­tooed with [prison] num­bers with three nee­dles tied togeth­er, and a ​“block elder” with a green tri­an­gle[3] assigned them a place in a bar­rack with bunk beds: one bare wood­en bed of 2 x 2 metres for every ten persons.

All days were the same — a piece of bread and mar­garine at 5.00 am, then a roll call and work until 6.00 pm. For lunch, their cell­mates brought them beet soup. They were dig­ging trench­es for sew­ers and the food was insuf­fi­cient for such hard work, so they also ate roots they dug up.

The elder­ly peo­ple and chil­dren in Jelínek’s block were soon tak­en to the gas cham­ber, among them his par­ents and his sib­lings’ chil­dren. The selec­tion was made dur­ing the morn­ing rounds by the Lager­arzt [camp doc­tor] Dr. Men­gele. Some of the pris­on­ers could not bear the psy­cho­log­i­cal stress and died delib­er­ate­ly on the wires of the elec­tric fence.

The women were housed in what was called the wom­en’s camp and worked on road con­struc­tion. If any of them could not keep up with the pace of the work, they would be beat­en or shot by the SS. It was the same for the men. Jelínek recalled that when they were dig­ging a three-metre-deep trench and his forty-eight-year-old broth­er[4] could not get out with a wheel­bar­row of dirt, an SS man killed him with a spade blow to the back of the head. The pris­on­ers killed at work had to be brought to the camp in the evening so that they could be count­ed. How­ev­er, the num­bers were con­stant­ly being replen­ished from new trans­ports.[5]

After three months, Jelínek and oth­er young men were trans­ferred from the so-called Gyp­sy fam­i­ly camp to the main camp. They were housed in brick build­ings and slept on straw mat­tress­es. He worked in Kom­man­do 122, com­mand­ed by a Ger­man nick­named Jupp; they built quar­ters for the fam­i­lies of SS mem­bers. Of his fel­low pris­on­ers, he remem­bered how friend­ly the Sovi­ets were. Once, when a guard beat his friend Ivan to death, the oth­er Rus­sians took revenge by stab­bing the guard with a file. He admired the courage with which they then went to their own execution.

The sit­u­a­tion in the camp wors­ened, with more and more dead being brought back from work every day. He recalled a mass exe­cu­tion of eleven pris­on­ers on the gal­lows dur­ing roll call. Lagerkom­man­dant [Rudolf] Höss intro­duced it with a speech say­ing that all the Slavs would pass through the chim­neys of the cre­ma­to­ria. Pris­on­ers were beat­en more fre­quent­ly, and warn­ings were spread through the camp not to go to the camp hos­pi­tal because the patients there were receiv­ing lethal injec­tions. Jelínek’s sec­ond elder broth­er[6] died there. He went to the camp hos­pi­tal with toothache and his dead body was thrown out the next day.

In Sep­tem­ber 1943, Men­gele select­ed young pris­on­ers from a line-up, and Jelínek was among them. They were tak­en to a build­ing nick­named Men­gele’s sauna. They were giv­en beef soup, pota­toes and meat for a week, then Men­gele mea­sured and weighed them and they were giv­en an injec­tion in the left shoul­der. Jelínek became very thirsty and fever­ish and fell asleep; the same injec­tion, he says, was giv­en to a guinea pig which died soon after. Among the pris­on­ers was a doc­tor Jílek[7] who told Jelínek that he had been inoc­u­lat­ed with epi­dem­ic typhus. Then he received anoth­er injec­tion, after which he had blue spots all over his body, and again he was giv­en a bet­ter diet. After a week, the pro­ce­dure was repeat­ed, anoth­er guinea pig died, and Jelínek suf­fered from chills and pain. After three days he was allowed to return to his team. Thir­ty-one of fifty pris­on­ers sur­vived the experiment.

In March 1944, the camp was evac­u­at­ed, and only the sick remained in the camp hos­pi­tal. Josef Jelínek was tak­en by trans­port to Buchen­wald, where he met Fran­tišek Mráz from Hodonín, Dr. Češpi­va from Prague, and Dr. Zelený.[8] He worked in a stone quar­ry for three weeks, and was then trans­ferred to the Dora con­cen­tra­tion camp in Norhausen.[9] In the under­ground fac­to­ry, he was involved in the pro­duc­tion of V1 and V2. Approx­i­mate­ly 18,000 pris­on­ers of Sovi­et nation­al­i­ty worked there[10] who knew that the rock­ets were being launched on Eng­land from Cologne and rec­om­mend­ed ways of sab­o­tag­ing pro­duc­tion. Wehrma­cht sol­diers super­vised every­thing and hanged pris­on­ers on sus­pi­cion of sab­o­tage. Josef Jelínek recalled that he often worked beneath a hanged pris­on­er for five hours before the body was untied and tak­en away. A group of pris­on­ers who marked the rock­et wag­ons with labels and delib­er­ate­ly switched them were also exe­cut­ed after it was discovered.

In Sep­tem­ber 1944 a group of French and Sovi­et pris­on­ers man­aged to blow up the main trans­former and the tun­nel was with­out pow­er for three days. Jelínek had actu­al­ly been on the night shift; they had to wait their turn and were tak­en to the camp in the morn­ing. At the gate, some of them were select­ed and the camp com­man­dant then called on the sabo­teurs to con­fess or he would exe­cute these ran­dom­ly select­ed men. In all, 78 of the mas­ter­minds of the action stepped out of the line and were sub­se­quent­ly hanged; in addi­tion, the Ger­mans shot many more after the order to disperse.

In Dora, they ini­tial­ly slept on the floor of the under­ground fac­to­ry, where it was noisy and damp; lat­er they were housed in a camp and com­mut­ed to the fac­to­ry for twelve-hour shifts. There was a twelve-kilo­me­tre tun­nel run­ning through the com­plex, which was also accessed by a rail­way, and from which there were entrances to halls equipped with mod­ern machin­ery. The pris­on­ers worked in one half of the com­plex, while the oth­er half was an arma­ments fac­to­ry, where men on forced labour worked.

In April 1945, the camp was evac­u­at­ed; they were giv­en a kilo loaf of bread and a tin of food for the train jour­ney. On the fourth day they reached Ravens­brück and, on orders from the SS, they threw the bod­ies of those who had not sur­vived the jour­ney out of the wag­ons and spent the night in the wom­en’s con­cen­tra­tion camp. The next morn­ing they were lined up for anoth­er march with the women pris­on­ers. Those who could not go on were shot. After two days, they reached a vil­lage where the locals offered them food, and in the ensu­ing chaos, Jelínek man­aged to escape.[11] For four days he and two oth­er pris­on­ers hid in the woods. Then they reached a bridge over the riv­er over which the Ger­mans were retreat­ing and throw­ing away their shoul­der boards and their weapons. Jelínek and the two pris­on­ers thus obtained sub­ma­chine guns and shot the last two Ger­man sol­diers, who evi­dent­ly intend­ed to blow up the bridge. The next morn­ing on the bridge they were wel­comed by Russ­ian sol­diers and sent to the near­est town. It was Schw­erin, and they were bil­let­ed, along with many oth­ers, in a for­mer bar­racks where Jelínek wait­ed to be tak­en to Czecho­slo­va­kia. He was trans­port­ed to Prague and at the main sta­tion took the first train to Brno He was wear­ing prison clothes and over them a uni­form giv­en to him by the Rus­sians. At the Brno-Čer­novice sta­tion he was joined by Fran­tišek Navrátil from Uher­ský Ostroh. They sought out the Red Cross cen­tre[12] where they were able to have a bath, eat and sleep. The next day Jelínek drove to Strážnice. On the way from the sta­tion, all he could think about was whether he would be reunit­ed with his fiancée and son. The boy did not rec­og­nize him when they met on the street, but his fiancée was already wait­ing at the door. He report­ed that it was a joy­ful and tear­ful welcome.

[1] First name not given.

[2] The the­atre hall in the for­mer inn ​“U Odstrčilů” at Chválkovice. (ed.)

[3] The mark of a con­vict­ed criminals.

[4] Name not given.

[5] For exam­ple, the mass trans­ports from the Pro­tec­torate of 7 May, 22 August and 19 Octo­ber 1943. (ed.)

[6] Name not given.

[7] Prob­a­bly the Jew­ish physi­cian Dr. Alfréd Mílek from Prague. (ed.)

[8] First names not given.

[9] Orig­i­nal­ly a branch of the camp at Buchen­wald, it lat­er became inde­pen­dent; offi­cial­ly it was called Mit­tel­bau I. (ed.)

[10] Accord­ing to the records of Novem­ber 1, 1944, there were 9,481 Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, 8,347 Poles, 5,114 French, 2,114 Ger­mans, 2,047 Bel­gians, 1,185 Roma, 1,170 Hun­gar­i­an Jews, 1,078 Czechs, 500 Ital­ians, 415 Yugoslavs, 212 Dutch, and 704 mem­bers of oth­er or uniden­ti­fied nation­al­i­ties. (ed.)

[11] The Ravens­brück con­cen­tra­tion camp was evac­u­at­ed dur­ing the week of 21 – 28 April 1945. (ed.)

[12] The Red Cross and the repa­tri­a­tion cen­tre of the Min­istry of Labour oper­at­ed in the Pad­owetz Palace on the cor­ner of Masaryk Street in Brno.