Pavlína Nováková

Pavli­na Nováková’s father had an acci­dent as a four­teen-year-old boy when he was buried alive in a quar­ry. He then earned his liv­ing as a shoe­mak­er and received a pen­sion of five hun­dred crowns. Pavlina’s moth­er was a house­wife. The Istváns had six chil­dren and the fam­i­ly lived in their own house in Brno.

Pavlí­na said the fam­i­ly said they had no idea what a con­cen­tra­tion camp was. A sum­mons came for her and her moth­er. At that time Pavlí­na was being held in the prison at Cejl[1] because she used to run away from home and school; nei­ther her father nor the oth­er chil­dren were sum­moned. Both moth­er and daugh­ter were tak­en to the Brno slaugh­ter­house col­lec­tion point and from there to the camp at Hodonín u Kunštá­tu. Their father, how­ev­er, was on good terms with the Czech gen­darmes, whose boots he made, and so they were able to return home. In 1942, how­ev­er, they were both tak­en again to the slaugh­ter­house, where they were kept for two or three weeks. In the mean­time, the oth­er Roma from Bohemia and Moravia were round­ed up, includ­ing from Prague, Brno,[2] Olo­mouc, Rousínov and Kyjov, and they were tak­en to Auschwitz in wag­ons intend­ed for trans­port­ing pigs. She says that half the chil­dren suf­fo­cat­ed on the way in the over­crowd­ed wag­ons. Some Roma threw let­ters from the train to their fam­i­lies, telling them to hide. Czech gen­darmes rode with them to the bor­der, where the Gestapo and their dogs took them over. She believed this was the first trans­port to Auschwitz, because only two con­cen­tra­tion camps and a cre­ma­to­ri­um had been built there at that time. She said that there were also Jews with them.[3] On their arrival, the Ger­mans tat­tooed a num­ber on their arms and herd­ed them into the blocks. She said preg­nant women and chil­dren under the age of six were sent straight to ​“the fur­naces”. A kinder­garten was run for some of the chil­dren, but in time they were also mur­dered in the gas cham­bers. Old­er chil­dren had to work in the sul­phur mines. Pris­on­ers infect­ed with typhus were sent straight to ​“the fur­naces”. When ​“the fur­naces” were over­crowd­ed, a pit was dug, gaso­line poured into it, wood piled there, and the dogs chased the pris­on­ers direct­ly into the pit.

Through cracks in the bar­rack walls she saw trans­ports arriv­ing from oth­er camps, Roma from var­i­ous coun­tries, except for Slo­va­kia and Hun­gary. The Roman­ian Roma were ill and the whole trans­port went straight to ​“the fur­naces”. In the morn­ing, all you could see were flames and a lot of rags left behind.

She remem­bered the kapos. The Czech and Ger­man Roma kapos were said to be worse than the Gestapo. When a pris­on­er asked for more soup, the Gestapo would some­times secret­ly leave some at the bot­tom of the caul­dron; but if one of the Roma kapos noticed some­one rush­ing to the caul­dron, he killed on him on the spot. Accord­ing to the sur­vivor, the Jew­ish kapos res­olute­ly forced the pris­on­ers to work, even when they were sick. They also chose girls as young as 14 or 15 for sex, which to some extent pro­tect­ed these girls from being mur­dered. Some Poles were good, they warned the pris­on­ers about poi­soned med­i­cines. She said the Ukraini­ans picked on them; for instance, when they saw a pris­on­er show a cross to a new trans­port as a sign they were going to the gas cham­bers, they would beat them to death. Peo­ple who had just arrived on the trans­port would throw away parcels of things, and if a pris­on­er tried to take them, a Ukrain­ian or a Russ­ian woman would beat him to death with a whip. When there was sca­bies they had to bathe in sul­phur water; if some­one did­n’t want to go, they hosed them into it with ice-cold water. Ukrain­ian women had to serve the Ger­mans in the so-called broth­el and lived out­side the camp. Accord­ing to Nováková, ​“they were in clover”.

There were only Czech, Mora­vian and Ger­man Roma in their bar­rack. In one bar­rack, about 200 pris­on­ers slept on three-storey plank-beds, usu­al­ly the whole fam­i­ly togeth­er. Nováková her­self slept on a plank-bed with three sis­ters and two broth­ers. When her lit­tle broth­er died, she car­ried him in her arms and begged the Gestapo man to lay him nice­ly on the pile,but instead he grabbed his lit­tle arm and flung him there. She dragged her dead moth­er by her legs two hun­dred metres to the crematorium.

For food they were giv­en beets, net­tles, rot­ten pota­toes and the meat of ani­mals that had died and been chopped up. Only when [Josef] Men­gele came there did they add mar­garine or but­ter, for exam­ple, to make it look as if the pris­on­ers’ were receiv­ing good food. When Men­gele left, it was removed from the food again.

In the morn­ing there was a roll call of the pris­on­ers, dur­ing which they were select­ed for work. If a man was too thin, what the sur­vivor called a ​“muz­man” [Musul­mann], they shot him and in the evening took him to the heap where there were anoth­er fifty or six­ty dead. In addi­tion, they struck pris­on­ers who were being pun­ished with shov­els or pickaxes. 

The pris­on­ers worked in the quar­ry, throw­ing stones and rub­ble into big iron trucks,like the ones used in mines. Who­ev­er was able in the morn­ing went to work, while the old peo­ple stayed in the block. After the return from work there was a roll call and dis­tri­b­u­tion of food. Some­times this was fol­lowed by what the sur­vivor called ​“eklauzn”,[4] when the pris­on­ers had to strip naked, be shaved, ​“top and bot­tom” she said, and have kerosene pumped on them as dis­in­fec­tant. If lice or fleas were found, the pris­on­ers were dri­ven out of the block and put in a clean block, and the whole build­ing was dis­in­fect­ed. If a pris­on­er kept any­thing in the block, such as food, they lost it. For exam­ple, pris­on­ers hoard­ed pota­toes or bread, and also exchanged bread for soup with the Rus­sians or Ukraini­ans on the oth­er side of the fence.

Bar­rels were used as toi­lets, and their con­tents then emp­tied by the pris­on­ers into the cesspool using the food bowls. The bar­rels had to be scrubbed until they shone.

Once some young pris­on­ers tried to escape through an under­ground sew­er, but they were caught, and, with mem­bers of their fam­i­ly, were hogtied and beat­en, and the boys were rid­dled with bul­lets. Oth­er pris­on­ers had to run in the mud out­side, keep run­ning and lying down until they fell. And who­ev­er fell, was fin­ished off.

Dur­ing her impris­on­ment in the camps, Pavli­na con­tract­ed tuber­cu­lo­sis and typhus. She was in Auschwitz for more than two years, and then was tak­en to Ravens­brück, where there were brick bar­racks, and instead of tat­toos a hole was cut in the mid­dle of their calves as a kind of mark. Then they took her to ​“Plav­na”,[5] Svata­va and Kraslice. In Kraslice they made hand grenades, and also worked in the bot­tling plant of the brew­ery. She remem­bers a Ger­man mak­ing them a Christ­mas tree. A Czech in the fac­to­ry gave them plans for escap­ing to Prague. He encour­aged them to make a mess, and make things prop­er­ly only when the Gestapo came by. Her friend Bar­ka who slept above her, escaped with the help of the plan. Her absence was dis­cov­ered in the morn­ing and Pavli­na con­fessed that she had unpicked the cross mark­ings on Barka’s clothes and also agreed to let Bar­ka go and fetch cof­fee instead of her. Eri­ka, the Gestapo girl, beat her for that and knocked out three of her teeth. As pun­ish­ment, she had to work out­side, har­nessed to a wagon.

Pavli­na recalls that some of the Roma in the camp behaved bad­ly. When some­one put a bowl in front of them to scoop food, they threw it in the person’s face along with its contents. 

When the front was approach­ing, they left Kraslice on a death march. She expe­ri­enced a bom­bard­ment in which twelve wag­ons were destroyed; but theirs did not get hit. The dead pris­on­ers were then buried in the fields. The Ger­mans no longer walked with them in uni­form, but in civil­ian clothes. The Jews were returned to Terezín and the oth­er pris­on­ers were con­stant­ly moved; they were afraid of the Amer­i­can planes. They were giv­en white scarves to wave when the planes flew over, to make it obvi­ous that they were pris­on­ers. When there were air raids, they slept in farm­ers’ homes and in barns, but also in the fields, even in the win­ter. If some­one could­n’t go on, they were shot. The Ger­mans took the pris­on­ers’ bread and sala­mi and gave them sug­ar, flour or pota­toes instead, which they begged from the farmers.

The pris­on­ers were released on the day Adolf Hitler died. Before that[6] they had stayed in Manětín and Knínice,[7] where there were par­ti­sans. She said the Ger­mans caught the par­ti­sans and burned Knínice — and then she told a sto­ry of revenge, when she said the Amer­i­cans bru­tal­ly tor­tured the may­or,[8] hung him up and peo­ple spat on him.[9] From Manětín the Amer­i­cans took the pris­on­ers to Prague, which the Rus­sians had already reached, and where fight­ing was still going on.

[1] A for­mer pen­i­ten­tiary in Brno-Zábr­dovice between Bratislavská, Soud­ní and Cejl streets.

[2] She does not men­tion whether there were oth­er mem­bers of their fam­i­ly among them; how­ev­er, lat­er she was in Auschwitz with her brothers.

[3] It is not clear whether he means the trans­port or the camp.

[4] A cor­rup­tion of the Ger­man ent­lausen, to delouse. 

[5] A town in Saxony.

[6] It is not clear when exactly.

[7] A small vil­lage north of the town of Žlu­tice, in west­ern Bohemia.

[8] His name and the name of the vil­lage is not mentioned.

[9] We have found no record of the burn­ing of Knínice or of the Amer­i­cans’ pun­ish­ment of the may­or after the war in the historiography.

When Pavli­na Nováková got to Brno after the war, some­one was already liv­ing in her house. At the Nation­al Com­mit­tee, where she went to request the return of her prop­er­ty, she was told that the Ger­mans had sold every­thing, so she was giv­en only a wardrobe, a bed, and food vouch­ers. All she asked for was a black cos­tume, so she could wear mourn­ing. She sold the house to her aunt, who had returned from a con­cen­tra­tion camp, and moved to Kraslice, where she lived in a vil­la with a gar­den aban­doned by a doc­tor. She worked in a lemon­ade bot­tling plant, and for four years on a youth con­struc­tion site; how­ev­er, she had to fal­si­fy her birth date because she was too young. Then they took the vil­la away from her, say­ing that she did­n’t need such a big house and that she would get an apart­ment, which was why she went to the Karlovy Vary region.