Marie Nedvědová

Maria Ned­vě­dová’s father was Václav Kovář, and her moth­er Božena’s maid­en name was Serinková. They had eight chil­dren: sons Fil­ip, Jaroslav, Lojza, Pepík, Eda and Robert, and besides Marie, one daugh­ter, Zdeňka.

Marie Ned­vě­dová wrote that they did not know they were assigned to the trans­port until the last moment. The Roma, includ­ing their entire fam­i­ly, gath­ered at the sta­tion in Příbram, from which they trav­elled in over­crowd­ed train car­riages to the Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp. The train did not stop any­where on the way; they were not allowed to take any­thing with them, but were not giv­en any­thing to eat or drink. They arrived at Auschwitz in the evening. The guards drove them out of the wag­ons like cat­tle, and then they walked for half an hour. They knew that this was a camp and that they would not sur­vive; just enter­ing it was ter­ri­ble. As soon as they arrived, they were shaved and the women and men were herd­ed togeth­er into the show­ers, where only cold water was run­ning. They were giv­en tat­toos and then stayed in quar­an­tine for about a week, where they were giv­en prison clothes and clogs. After quar­an­tine, the fam­i­ly was housed in block 11, where there were no win­dows, only ven­ti­la­tion. They were giv­en ​“horse” blan­kets and slept on the bunk beds above each oth­er. There were no toi­lets in the block, only bar­rels that were tak­en out to be emp­tied. Accord­ing to Ned­vě­dová, 300 pris­on­ers of var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties lived in the block, main­ly Czechs, Hun­gar­i­ans, Ger­mans, Poles and Roma. Roll calls were held once a day, and if some­one was absent, they last­ed all day, and even the chil­dren had to attend. After the roll call they went to work out­side the camp; this was most­ly car­ry­ing stones from demo­li­tion sites. They worked from eight in the morn­ing until three in the after­noon, with the guards some­times beat­ing them and shoot­ing at them.

Once a day they were giv­en food, fod­der beets and a hun­dred grams of bread, with birch leaf tea to drink, but no cof­fee. Bet­ter food could be bought in the can­teen, but the Kovář fam­i­ly had no mon­ey, and no parcels were sent to them, because the whole fam­i­ly was in the camp.

Many dis­eases were ram­pant in the camp, Ned­vě­dová men­tions tuber­cu­lo­sis, gas­tric catarrh, as well as epi­dem­ic typhus and typhoid fever, which she her­self con­tract­ed. She was in hos­pi­tal with it, but there was no care and the doc­tors did not treat the patients well. They took blood sam­ples from her but did not x‑ray her or send her for tests.

Pris­on­er mor­tal­i­ty was high. Maria Ned­vě­dová’s father was beat­en, her moth­er and two sib­lings died in the gas cham­ber, and [the] oth­ers were poi­soned.[1] Ned­vě­dová wrote that she knew where the gas cham­bers were and what was hap­pen­ing in them. She described how, when a pris­on­er escaped, the the whole block was pun­ished – it was closed and no one was allowed out. The escaped pris­on­er was shot and then shown as a deter­rent to each block.

She was trans­port­ed from Auschwitz to ​“Rabers­brück” [prob­a­bly to Ravens­brück con­cen­tra­tion camp] and was lib­er­at­ed on 5 May 1945 in Ham­burg. She wrote that the Ger­mans even­tu­al­ly took them to Pilsen.

[1] It is not clear what is meant by this.