Karolína Kozáková

Karolína Kozáková’s father, Robert Růžička, was born in 1910, as was her mother Johana Čermáková. He had thirteen siblings and came from South Bohemia from the Růžička — Lagron – Kraus – Langmüller family line and other families. His parents had the right of domicile in Hluboká [nad Vltavou]. People respected them and the children of the family were friends with the children of the Czech neighbours. Karolína’s mother Johana came from Tišnov near Brno from the Čermák – Janosovský – Studený – Vrbů – Holomek – Habr and Daniel family line and she had seven siblings. Her great-grandfather owned the ​“Circus Henry”.

Following a short acquaintance, Karolína’s parents began to live together and seven children were born to them – Jan in 1928 in Jíloviště near Prague, Anna two years later, Karolína in 1932, Filoména two years later in Strakonice, Barbora in Písek in 1936, and Josef at Zdaboř in 1943.[1] Her youngest sister was born three years after the war at Březové Hory. Her parents saved up for a luxurious, expensive car, which was manufactured in Slany and cost forty thousand crowns, she said. The family used it to tour horse markets in southern Bohemia and around Prague, where they also met up with relatives. In addition to the horse trade, her father had a business sharpening knives and scissors. Her mother would go from house to house collecting blunt tools to sharpen while also doing palm-reading. They usually parked the wagon near schools so that the two older siblings could attend them, something she said their father strictly enforced, and the school principals recorded their punctual attendance in a register for travellers.

In 1939, the parents bought a two-room house with a garden at Zdaboř, so the older siblings now had a permanent school at Březové Hory, an hour away. The large room in the house was occupied by the Růžička family, while the other, smaller room was occupied by a tenant, Ms. Picková with her two small children.[2] They had close and friendly relations with their neighbours. That same year Karolína started school and her teacher considered her so talented that she tried to persuade her father to let her study at the gymnasium in Příbram, but without success.

[1] Now part of the town of Příbram.

[2] First name not given.

In 1940 and 1941, the family continued to travel around the region with the wagon before moving into a large house at Březové Hory in 1942.

In 1942, [Václav] Brázda, the police chief at Březové Hory, came to warn the family in person. He advised them to flee to Slovakia in time, but the father decided to stay – among other reasons, so as not to endanger the Brázda family, who would face death if their assistance was revealed. However, her father asked Ms Pick to send a telegram to Lysá nad Labem to his rich uncle Eda, his wife’s brother – who earned more than Karolína’s father and helped the family – telling him that the family would be taken away. Two days later, the Růžička family was indeed deported to Prague, where other Roma from Bohemia and Moravia were being assembled. Various people, including police chief Brázda, interceded on behalf of the Růžička family, and in the end the Růžičkas remained as the only family who did not board the lorry bound for the camp at Lety near Písek. Uncle Eda and his wife Fany had arrived and ransomed the family. However, they never said how much they paid for the family’s release.

Soon afterwards, her mother fell ill and Aunt Fany came for the three sisters to give her relief. Karolína stayed at home with her mother to take care of her. However, the sisters were taken with Aunt Fany’s entire family to the camp in Lety. The uncle worked hard for their release, but it took him five months before the sisters were allowed to return home. She said it cost a lot of money and gold.

V In 1943, Karolina’s mother became pregnant, but a week before the birth of her son Josef members of the SS arrived at the Růžička family home and took everyone to the Gestapo in Prague, except for her mother, who was due to give birth, and whose turn would come later. They were fingerprinted and had signs hung around their necks that read ​“Auschwitz”. Then they were taken to the collection point in Ruzyně prison. But Uncle Eda, to whom Ms Picková immediately sent a telegram, managed to rescue them even from there, and the family was reunited before Josef’s birth.

In order to protect the family from the transports, his father eventually volunteered for forced labour in Germany and was sent to work in an arms factory. He came home every month, and returned for good after falling ill. Her mother went door-to-door selling haberdashery to support herself and her six children.

The family of one of Karolína’s father’s sisters was taken to Germany to a concentration camp where they were all murdered. Of the approximately sixty members of her father’s family, only one niece, Emila, then twenty years old, survived the war.

After the war, her father drove a horse-drawn wagon bringing sand from a quarry for people to build houses. Her mother was a skilled peddler – she started by finding women who made bobbin lace in the Hlinsko area and then sold whole sets of bobbin lace for bedrooms. The family was getting better and better off, so Karolína Kozáková’s father, out of gratitude and following the example of her generous uncle Eda, brought two Czech orphans into the family – Stázička and Hamet,[1] who stayed with them until they reached adulthood.

Karolína’s father found her a job in a printing house at Zdaboř. In 1950 she married Jaroslav Novotný with whom she had a son, who later grew up with her childless sister Barča in Prague and visited her family in Brno. However, the marriage fell apart within two years; she met her second husband, Miroslav Kozák, during her first pregnancy; as a result of a second pregnancy she was eventually divorced and was able to marry Kozák, the father of their daughter, who was born in 1952. The new family lived in Brno. Two years later they had a son and in 1956 another son was born. However, Kozáková’s husband became seriously ill and died in 1962, after which she started working as a waitress.

In 1969 she married Jarek (Jaroslav) Vdoleček, a motor mechanic, and four years later they had a son.

Karolína Kozáková’s first two sons live in Germany, while her daughter and third son live in Moravia.

[1] Surnames not given