Antonín Daniel

Antonín Daniel’s family had lived at Žebětín near Brno for generations – the two houses under the brickworks were the home of his great-grandfather, grandfather and father, who had right of abode in the village and also attended school there. His father František Daniel contracted tuberculosis. His mother, Jana Danielová, did casual work for the farmers, as did Antonín when school was over. His brothers Josef and Láďa and his sister Stázka also lived at home. Daniel’s uncle Josef worked in Brno at the ink factory of [Rudolf and Alois] Schneider, whose owners liked him so much that they lent him their own cart to transport building materials for Uncle Josef to build a house.

In addition to the Daniels, the Růžička family also lived at Žebětín during the war. They were forced to settle in the village (according to a Protectorate decree), and found work there, living in covered wagons. Later they were deported to the camp in Hodonín near Kunštát. The neighbours were distressed when the village received the call to transport the Daniels to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The mayor [Jan] Stejskal was a close friend of all four of the Daniels’ children. They managed to delay the transport of his uncle’s family by two months, but Antonín Daniel, his mother, sister and brother had to leave immediately.[1]

At the slaughterhouse reception centre the German police took custody of them and during the two weeks they were held there with Romani people from Maloměřice, Černovice, Kostivárna and the Brno district, they recorded their details, took their fingerprints and photographed them. The Roma were then taken to Auschwitz in cattle cars.

Upon arrival, the children were taken by lorries to the camp; the others had to walk for about half an hour. On the way, they saw groups of prisoners working outside who were shouted at and beaten continuously, and they also noticed dead and emaciated prisoners. Daniel was placed in block twenty among about four hundred other prisoners. The Blockälteste and barrack orderlies of German nationality had a room in the block and were subject to the Blockführer, who visited the block daily to carry out checks. If anything went wrong, the block orderlies that were disciplined took their anger out on the prisoners.

He said it was important to get a good job inside the camp or work in a small team outside the camp. Daniel was lucky because he worked in the camp kitchen. He would get up before 4 am so that he could make tea and take the food containers to the front of the kitchen. For lunch they cooked beet soup and potatoes, and for dinner they gave out a quarter of a loaf of bread and a small cube of margarine. One day Daniel was caught taking food out of the kitchen in his teapot; he was given twenty-five lashes with a rubber hose in the office and reassigned to the work parties. It was important to be part of a small group, because then there was more food left for each prisoner. Daniel was in such a work party, extending the railway tracks that led to the crematoria, or transporting dead and half-dead prisoners from the hospital block to the incinerator. When the incinerator was not burning enough, they were taken to the pits, and another work party poured kerosene over the bodies and set them alight..

When the prisoners left for work in the morning, they passed through a gate where about thirty musicians sat and played. At the gate, the number of those leaving and the number of prisoners arriving after work were reported, including those who had died from being beating or shot while at work. The prisoners were lined up in the aisles between the blocks and a count was taken of the prisoners on the blocks, in the work parties and in the infirmary. Often they stood in the cold or rain – when small children cried he said they were shot in the arms of their mothers without hesitation. The evening roll call was followed by free time – the prisoners used to time to ​“organise” themselves, among other things. A number of people in civilian clothes, Poles and Silesians, came to the camp to supervise the various jobs or to do them themselves. They sometimes brought tobacco, soap and other things to the prisoners, but they also informed them about what was happening outside, about the progress of the front, etc.

According to Antonín Daniel, there were two groups of prisoners in the camp: one group did not lose the will to live, kept themselves clean, and avoided drinking unsafe water, for example; the others threw themselves on electric wires — as many as ten of them a day — or were apathetic, drank any kind of water and ate kitchen garbage; most of the second group became ill and were ​“done for”. Typhoid fever and dysentery or scabies ran rampant. Daniel also worked in the infirmary, and would take pills from there to sick prisoners. Again, they found out about it and he was made to go back to the work parties. From time to time, Josef Mengele would come to the infirmary and select prisoners for various experiments or to be sent to the gas chamber. Daniel recounted how, when the so-called Bloksperre was in progress, they were all afraid that the entire block would be taken away. The men who were able to do so immediately looked for something to defend themselves with.

After Daniel’s mother, sister and one of his brothers died in the camp, he volunteered for a transport to Buchenwald. After three weeks of quarantine, they were taken to Dora. He worked on the camp fence, digging holes for the posts. The kapo was German and shared everything, such as bread, with the prisoners, and also allowed them to rest in the pits. Once he finished early with the prisoners and they hid from the rain; when it was discovered, they were all punished. They were taken to work in the nearby Harzungen camp, where they worked on the cliff and broke boulders – those who couldn’t handle the hard work were thrown off the cliff.

When the front approached, the prisoners were marched away. In one village they boarded a train, but after a few kilometres the train was the target of shelling. Those who had been accompanying the prisoners all the way got off the train, put white shirts on their rifles and waved them until the planes flew away. One night artillery fire reached them and the prisoners were driven out of the barn. Daniel, together with some other prisoners, took advantage of the sudden confusion to escape. They included Honza Hulánek from Maloměřice, Pepík and Honzík Růžička, Eda Daniel, Mirek and Honzík Daniel, Petráš Holomek, Franta and Vinca from Kyjov, two Poles and a Frenchman. On the road to the village of Borne near Leipzig they encountered American soldiers and were later taken to Prague.

[1] Transport of 7.3.1943.

Antonín Daniel arrived in Žebětín at night and went straight to the mayor’s house, where he was given food and they talked all night. The family of a carter with seven children already lived in Daniel’s house, so he went to stay with his friend Jan Konečná.

He found a job in Brno and later married. His eldest son became a doctor, his second son passed his high school diploma, his third son became an artistic blacksmith, and his daughter married and moved to Canada.