Zdeněk Daniel

Zdeněk Daniel was born in 1929 in Osla­vany, Brno dis­trict. He comes from the Daniel fam­i­ly, one of the Romani fam­i­lies with the longest his­to­ry in Moravia since the end of the 18^th cen­tu­ry. His grand­par­ents also lived in Osla­vany. His father, Jan Daniel, nick­named Hon­za or also Gyp­sy Baron, was a horse trad­er. He was an expert on hors­es and he could tell by their teeth which of of them was healthy, but only neglect­ed and mal­nour­ished. He would buy such hors­es, and restore their con­di­tion with prop­er care, before sell­ing them to farm­ers at a con­sid­er­able prof­it. His moth­er, Růže­na Danielová, had com­plet­ed the sixth grade in Aus­tria and ran a cloth ped­dling busi­ness. She would buy fab­rics from Jews in Brno and sell them in Zlín, Otrokovice and the sur­round­ing area, where rich­er fam­i­lies lived. The Daniels lived well, and in the 1930s his par­ents bought a plot of land in a vil­lage out­side the local Roma colony and built a vil­la. The house includ­ed a court­yard with its own well, a room for a groom and sta­bles for horses.

Mr. Daniel’s extend­ed fam­i­ly did not suf­fer depri­va­tion before the war, and many of its mem­bers attend­ed var­i­ous types of schools. He men­tions his uncle Vašek, who had a car, which was oth­er­wise the priv­i­lege of doc­tors or phar­ma­cists, and his uncle [Josef Daniel][1] from Tišnov, who even had a bath­room in the house. His cousin Ton­da was a lieu­tenant dur­ing the First Repub­lic, his cousin Anka[2] grad­u­at­ed from the com­mer­cial acad­e­my, and anoth­er cousin Ton­da[3] grad­u­at­ed from the gym­na­si­um and was a teacher. The fam­i­ly was large, which Mr. Daniel tes­ti­fies to when recall­ing his cous­in’s wed­ding in Tišnov, to which they trav­elled from Osla­vany by hired bus.

Zdeněk Daniel grew up with two half-broth­ers, Pavel and Miroslav, whom his father had from a pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship. He recalls that he had a won­der­ful child­hood until he was 13 years old, when an ​“inven­to­ry of gyp­sies”[4] was ordered. At the time, he was attend­ing the ele­men­tary school and prepar­ing for the con­ser­va­toire (he was a tal­ent­ed vio­lin­ist), but he nev­er got to enrol there.

[1] Josef Daniel, nick­named Šíša, came from Osla­vany but moved to Tišnov, where he was one of the wealth­i­er cit­i­zens. His wife Anna Danielová was also a cloth trad­er. Josef Daniel was also deport­ed with his fam­i­ly to the Auschwitz-Birke­nau con­cen­tra­tion camp.

[2] Anna Danielová (1921, Osla­vany — 1999, Osla­vany) grad­u­at­ed from a com­mer­cial acad­e­my and is the first Romani woman in Moravia to be doc­u­ment­ed in his­tor­i­cal sources as hav­ing com­plet­ed sec­ondary school. Dur­ing the war she was sent to forced labour, after the war she worked as a sec­re­tary for var­i­ous offi­cial bod­ies in Brno. At the begin­ning of the 1950s, she was among a group of Roma activists in Brno who were already try­ing to estab­lish a Roma orga­ni­za­tion. When the Gyp­sy-Roma Union was estab­lished, she was very sig­nif­i­cant­ly involved in the activ­i­ties of the Com­mis­sion of For­mer Con­cen­tra­tion Camp Pris­on­ers seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for Romani Holo­caust sur­vivors (ed.) Antonín Daniel (1913, Osla­vany — 1996, Šumperk) became a teacher after the war. He was one of the found­ing fig­ures of the Gyp­sy-Roma Union. (ed.)

[3] Antonín Daniel (1913, Osla­vany — 1996, Šumperk) became a teacher after the war. He was one of the found­ing fig­ures of the Gyp­sy-Roma Union. (ed.)

[4] It was the so-called Inven­to­ry of Gyp­sies, Gyp­sy Mis­ce­genates and Per­sons Trav­el­ing in the Gyp­sy Man­ner ini­ti­at­ed in August 1942. The inven­to­ry served as a basis for the sub­se­quent depor­ta­tions of Roma to con­cen­tra­tion camps in the Pro­tec­torate and beyond. (ed.)

After the Pro­tec­torate was estab­lished, changes began. For exam­ple, Romani peo­ple were for­bid­den access to a pub­lic water pump, so every­one from the colony in Osla­vany would go to the Daniels’ yard to get water. It was no longer pos­si­ble to trade, and his father turned to cart­ing because he had a horse and wag­on and his father-in-law was a coach­man. When the first trans­ports of Romani fam­i­lies start­ed, Mr Daniel’s par­ents began to make the prop­er prepa­ra­tions, such as hid­ing the fab­rics with the shop­keep­er they bought them from and tak­ing the fur­ni­ture to the mas­ter join­er that Zdeněk Daniel was appren­ticed to.

On 5 May 1943, the entire fam­i­ly was deport­ed togeth­er with oth­er Romani peo­ple from Osla­vany to the so-called work­house[1] in Brno. They were tak­en there by train by a gen­darmerie escort and ques­tioned for two days. Aunt Mál­ka, a wid­ow whose chil­dren were already grown up and fin­ished their edu­ca­tion, was there with them.[2] Because of her deceased hus­band’s long ser­vice at the Osla­vany pow­er plant (since 1911), she was released from the work­house and allowed to take three more chil­dren from her fam­i­ly back home with her. Four­teen-year-old Zdeněk Daniel returned to Osla­vany with his aunt Mál­ka, cousin Vlas­ta and cousin Hon­za. The rest of his fam­i­ly was tak­en to the Auschwitz-Birke­nau con­cen­tra­tion camp [on May 7, 1943]. Mr Daniel believes that his fam­i­ly also had a chance to be exclud­ed from the trans­port, but the Roma from the Kos­tivár­na colony in Brno com­plained that the Roma from Osla­vany were being treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly because they were rich, and the gen­darmes there­fore includ­ed them in the transport.

The Daniels’ home in Osla­vany was occu­pied by the deputy com­man­der of the gen­darmes and his wife. Zdeněk Daniel could not even take his per­son­al belong­ings after return­ing from Brno and wit­nessed the sad scene of their hors­es being tak­en away. His aunt pro­vid­ed for them with cloth that had been hid­den at a mer­chan­t’s, which she secret­ly retrieved and exchanged for food.

Mr Daniel knows about his par­ents’ sub­se­quent fate from the account giv­en by his father, who sur­vived his deten­tion in the con­cen­tra­tion camp. In Auschwitz he had been forced to work as a corpse col­lec­tor and then worked as a labour­er under­ground,[3] where he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­duc­tion of V1 and V2 rock­ets for three months. Lat­er he man­aged to escape from a so-called death march. Of the broth­ers, only Mirek[4] returned, saved by the fact that he worked in the camp kitchen in Auschwitz. His moth­er Růže­na was trans­ferred from Auschwitz to Ravens­brück, but died at the Ger­man-Czech bor­der on her way home. Mr. Daniel knows her fate thanks to his aunt [Marcela Daniel], who returned home with­out an arm and with a shrap­nel in her leg. She said that a group of about ten women were return­ing home after escap­ing from Ravens­brück and were hit by a grenade while cross­ing the bor­der at night ( around 5 May). Mr Daniel’s moth­er lost her leg and bled to death. Apart from his aunt, anoth­er woman returned with injuries, but the shrap­nel had pen­e­trat­ed her lungs and she soon died. Zdeněk Daniel kept look­ing for his moth­er, because she had man­aged to write him let­ters. He received the last one before the end of the war, so he believed that she had sur­vived and would return. On the oth­er hand, he had no news of his father all this time. He did not even know that he was back in Moravia and recov­er­ing in hos­pi­tal: he was 181 cm tall but weighed only 55 kg. Zdeněk Daniel had their old Ger­man Shep­herd bitch, Zora, with him; her hind legs were already lame, but when Zdeněk Daniel’s father was com­ing home, she recog­nised him from a dis­tance of sev­er­al hun­dred metres, and ran to meet him, leap­ing on him with joy. 

Mr Daniel esti­mat­ed that five of the approx­i­mate­ly 115 Romani peo­ple from Osla­vany returned after the war. 

[1] The work­house was the col­lo­qui­al name for the Brno forced labour facil­i­ty that served as a assem­bly point for the sec­ond mass trans­port of Roma from Moravia to Auschwitz. (ed.)

[2] This refers to Amalia Daniel, the wid­ow of Joseph Daniel, who was nick­named Lud­va. He was per­ma­nent­ly employed in the Osla­vany pow­er plant from its estab­lish­ment, i.e. from 1911. Their fam­i­ly was the first Romani fam­i­ly to build a mason­ry house in Osla­vany in 1932. (ed.)

[3] In the Dora-Mit­tel­bau camp

[4] Miroslav Daniel, born 1925 in Osla­vany, was deport­ed on 5 May 1943 to the con­cen­tra­tion camp at Auschwitz, then was trans­ferred to the camp at Buchen­wald and then to the camp at Dora-Mit­tel­bau. (ed.)

After the war, Zdeněk Daniel stayed with his aunt in Osla­vany. His father remar­ried and start­ed a new fam­i­ly. Mr. Daniel trained as a plumber and heat­ing tech­ni­cian and went to work for the hous­ing depart­ment of the Chem­i­cal Works in Litvínov. He became an enthu­si­as­tic com­mu­nist, mar­ried a woman from a fam­i­ly of show peo­ple and raised two sons. He com­plet­ed his sec­ondary edu­ca­tion by evening class­es, received his diplo­ma in 1960. In 1968, as a result of his oppo­si­tion to the inva­sion by Sovi­et troops, he resigned from the Com­mu­nist Par­ty [he was ​“exclud­ed” in the com­mu­nist par­ty par­lance of the time] and was sub­se­quent­ly dis­missed from his job. His world fell apart a sec­ond time and he had to be hos­pi­tal­ized in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. In the ear­ly 1970s he and his fam­i­ly start­ed a new life in anoth­er town in north­ern Bohemia.

In the 1980s, when he already had a car, Mr. Daniel, his wife and sons went on hol­i­day to East Ger­many and vis­it­ed Ravens­brück, where his moth­er was impris­oned. They also vis­it­ed the bor­der near Cínovec, where she died, and they went to Auschwitz-Birke­nau in Poland, where his broth­er died.