Zdena Holomková

Zde­na Holomková was one of ten chil­dren. She and her par­ents Mar­tin Holomek and his wife Fran­tiš­ka had lived in Der­fli [since 1952 Sady].

In 1943, gen­darmes came to see the Holomeks and told them that they had been assigned to a trans­port. All the Roma fam­i­lies from the vil­lage had to join the trans­port. The may­or and the oth­ers knew about it, but there was noth­ing they could do; the may­or said that if there had been a choice, they would have left them at home.

The Roma were assem­bled in the Sokol Hall in Staré Měs­to [near Uher­ské Hradiště], where the gen­darmes pho­tographed them; then they were forced to take a bath and they were shaved. They were loaded onto cat­tle trucks, where they were crammed in, giv­en noth­ing to eat or drink, and had to use a buck­et as a toi­let. The train stopped in Ostra­va, where Ger­mans took charge of the trans­port from the Czech gen­darmes. The Holomeks had food from home, which enabled them to sur­vive the journey.

The trans­port reached Auschwitz in the evening, when it was already dark. The Ger­mans start­ed bang­ing on the doors of the wag­ons and forc­ing peo­ple out. They did­n’t know where they were; the guards beat them with rifle butts to hur­ry them up. They walked two or three hours from the sta­tion to the camp, some of them trav­el­ling in vehi­cles; 18-year-old Zde­na Holomková walked.

The entrance to the con­cen­tra­tion camp made a ter­ri­ble impres­sion on her: mud, Jew­ish and Roma pris­on­ers, elec­tric wires every­where. In one shed they were reg­is­tered and tat­tooed with num­bers. They were giv­en no water to drink or to wash with. When it rained, they tried to catch water in bowls, at least for drinking.

They remained in quar­an­tine for about a week, when they were divid­ed into blocks. The Holomek fam­i­ly end­ed up in block 16. There were ten of the Holomeks in all and they had their own bunk. There were no win­dows in the bar­racks, only a door at each end. There were no toi­lets, only bar­rels, and they had no place to wash. Lat­er on, a room was added to the bar­racks with a trough.[1] The block guards were polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, and in their block they were Poles. Lat­er on, some Roma also became block wardens.

For food, every day they were giv­en beet soup with pota­toes and a piece of bread, and to drink they had tea made from some kind of leaves, and cof­fee. There was also a can­teen, but only for those pris­on­ers who had mon­ey or gold to trade, and of course the Holomeks had none.

They were count­ed on the Appellplatz every morn­ing before leav­ing for work and on their return. Some­times they were kept there for two hours even in the cold and frost when the num­ber of pris­on­ers did not match the count.

In Auschwitz, Zde­na Holomková first went to work out­side the camp, dig­ging ditch­es in front of the mil­i­tary build­ings. Some kapos treat­ed the pris­on­ers decent­ly, some beat them for no rea­son. Then she start­ed work­ing in the kitchen, where she was bet­ter off. She worked from morn­ing to after­noon, cook­ing food and then clean­ing up. Then she had a day off, but she had to stay in the block.

In Auschwitz they had their hair cut every three months and, she says their clothes were burned. At first the Holomeks wore their own clothes; lat­er they were giv­en striped prison clothes. When they had been in the camp longer, the guards began to have fun at the pris­on­ers’ expense — for exam­ple, two pris­on­ers had to get down on all fours, a Ger­man would stand on top of them, and they had to crawl around on all fours.

Typhus and sca­bies were ram­pant in the camp, but Zde­na Holomková did not fall ill, nor was she ever in the camp infir­mary. Her father died of heart dis­ease, with which he had already had prob­lems at home; oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers per­ished in the gas cham­ber. Apart from Zde­na, only one sis­ter and one broth­er sur­vived, as they, like her, were sent to work in oth­er con­cen­tra­tion camps. One of her sis­ters did not want to be sep­a­rat­ed from her child, so she stayed with it, and they were killed together.

The gas cham­bers were right next to the bar­racks, so they saw the Jew­ish trans­ports arriv­ing and then vehi­cles com­ing back from the cre­ma­to­ria with clothes. Zde­na Holomková described the flames shoot­ing out of the cre­ma­to­ria. Although the Ger­mans always locked them up in the bar­racks when the trans­ports arrived, the pris­on­ers knew what was hap­pen­ing to the Jews. When the capac­i­ty of the cre­ma­to­ria was not suf­fi­cient the guards threw the dead Jews into a large dug-out pit.

When any of them escaped, they were caught and exe­cut­ed – she specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned a Roma from Strážnice, who was shot, and then his body was dis­played to the oth­er pris­on­ers to intim­i­date them.

A trans­port of Ger­man Roma arrived at the camp Their hair was not cut until the Czech Roma object­ed, so they their hair was cut as well. The Ger­man Roma played music in the block; they must have brought an accor­dion with them. They even got their hands on tobac­co in the can­teen. In the can­teen they also used to sell what Holomková calls slugs in mus­tard.[2]

Zde­na Holomková described how peo­ple became desen­si­tized after a while when they saw so many corpses every day. She stat­ed that she did not think about what would hap­pen to her; she sim­ply expect­ed death any moment.

One night, on the instruc­tions of the camp com­man­der, the guards select­ed all the pris­on­ers to go to the cre­ma­to­ri­um because they were sup­pos­ed­ly sick. How­ev­er, one of the doc­tors argued with the camp com­man­der about the need to select able-bod­ied peo­ple to work else­where. Thanks to this, Zde­na Holomková was saved. She was includ­ed in the trans­port to [the con­cen­tra­tion camp at] Ravens­brück.[3] The guards there were women, who behaved more cru­el­ly than the men. At this camp, Holomková received two parcels from her cousin, but every­thing was stolen.

From Ravens­brück, Zden­ka Holomková was trans­port­ed to the Mau­thausen con­cen­tra­tion camp, where Pol­ish pris­on­ers from Auschwitz were also trans­port­ed. The Poles told them that those who stayed in Auschwitz had died in the gas cham­bers. In Mau­thausen, Zde­na Holomková lived to see the lib­er­a­tion by the Amer­i­can army.[4] The Ger­mans fled as the Amer­i­can army approached and bombed the camp.

[1] At the begin­ning of March 1943 there were only kitchens, dor­mi­to­ry blocks and san­i­tary huts in the camp, in which there were toi­lets, and there were sup­posed to be wash­rooms (but these were not built until April, and the bath-house not until some­time in the late spring of 1943). (ed.)

[2] Pre­sum­ably pick­led snails.

[3] Trans­port of 2 August 1944. (ed.)

[4] Two days after the armed upris­ing of the pris­on­ers on May 5, 1945, the camp was lib­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can army. (ed.)

From Mau­thausen, Zde­na Holomková was tak­en by bus prob­a­bly to České Budějovice, and then took a train via Prague to Veselí nad Moravou. From there she con­tin­ued on foot to Sady, where her sis­ter had arrived ear­li­er. The broth­er was the last to arrive; the oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers had perished.