Berta Krausová

Berta Krausová’s family was the only Romani family living in a small house in the village of Snovídky, where Berta went to school. Her father was Florián Daniel, known as Jenda or Floriš, a well-known horse trader. He came from nearby Nesovice, where his brother also used to travel with him to various markets. Later, the family moved to Snovídky and his father worked as a carter, collecting iron, for example, and bringing it to the scrapyards. One of Berta Krausová’s uncles on her father’s side was Antonín Daniel from Oslavany, they called him Tonda the Teacher. Another was Alois Daniel from Bučovice.

Berta Krausová had nine younger siblings.

Their mother, Anastázie’s maiden name was Richterová and she came from the Czech lands. Her family lived in a house at Dobšice near Znojmo. Berta Krausová remembers her maternal grandmother as a woman who wore skirts, an apron with two pockets made of shiny black cloth, wore a scarf tied on her head, and smoked a pipe, a ​“short chibouk”.

During the war, the Kraus family were warned by a Czech gendarme about the transports. From about March to May 1943 they hid in a wagon in the vicinity of Snovídky, Bučovice and in the Buchlovy [probably Buchlovice] woods. Sometimes they hid in the barns of the local inhabitants, sometimes they were able to sleep at the house of a gamekeeper. Eventually they took refuge at the home of their grandmother Mrs Richterová at Dobšice near Znojmo.

During the war, Berta Krausová and her future husband were still children. But she remembers how her future mother-in-law was widowed during the war. Her mother-in-law already had two children at that time, the elder Máňa and a son Josef, who later became Berta Krausová’s husband, and she was expecting a third child, a daughter Berta. The then 18-year-old father of her children was killed on Vídeňská Street in Brno, near a restaurant, by a German G*psy, a certain Raimund [Nový], who was a Gestapo informer and even denounced people in Auschwitz. She said he was a ​“nasty man”. She didn’t know why it happened. The widow with three children then married her brother-in-law, the brother of the murdered man.

Berta Krausová attended school in Uherské Hradiště and trained as a seamstress. Her older sister studied at the teachers’ training college in Kroměříž, but a year before graduation she fell in love and did not finish her studies. Later she completed her education at a hotel school.

Berta Krausová had four children with her first husband Josef Lagron, but he died a violent death. She later married a man from the Kraus family and had more children with him.