František Růžička

František Růžička was born in Blučina, a village near Opatovice, south of Brno. The family lived in a large house.

As soon as the rumours began to spread that ​“something was afoot” and that everyone was to go to their home village, his father decided to move to the Brno district of Slatina. Several Růžička families, all belonging to his father’s five brothers, had settled in municipal housing beyond the new quarter, probably in Šmilovského Street.

At the age of eighteen or twenty, František Růžička used to go buying horses in the Slovácko region and Slovakia with his older brother and brother-in-law. Sometimes his father accompanied them, but if he did not, he would select from the horses they brought three or four of the best ones to sell at the market in Masná Street. The other horses were then sold for meat — the main buyers were the horse butchers Beňadik[1] in Pekařská Street and Koroptvička[2] in Královo Pole.

One morning, in early March 1943, their home was surrounded by Germans and officers of the Czech criminal police – the two leading ones were called Vrzák[3] and [Arnošt] Dubový. The latter could be bribed to supply a person with documents and then send him to Slovakia. The people who escaped in that way remained alive, Růžička said, because [Jozef] Tiso, the Slovak President, was supposed to have said that he would not put G*psies in camps [because] they were good soldiers.

The extended Růžička family, including children, women and the elderly, were transported to the collection point at the Brno workhouse in green vans without windows, similar to those used to deliver mail, Růžička recalled. Four days later, the detainees were taken to Masná Street, where there were were two stables about 20 metres long and 10 metres wide. They had to wait there, and only a few families managed to find a place on the straw. The only food they had was what they had managed to obtain for themselves before they were arrested.

After five days, they all had to board cattle trucks, each of which was packed with about 120 people. The train left in the afternoon and reached its destination, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the next morning [8 March 1943] without stopping.

[1] First name not given.

[2] First name not given.

[3] First name not given.

In 1954, František Růžička tried to trace the two aforementioned Czech Protectorate criminal police officers in Brno, but without success.