Iren Herák

Iren Herák grew up in Luhačovice with his mother and stepfather. He was named after his biological father, whose name was Jirka, and was nicknamed Iren. He worked from a young age and was an assistant on building sites even before he was able to carry a sack of cement.

Iren Herák spent six months near Vienna doing building work,[1] along with six other workers: a certain Peřesta from Bojkovice, who was not Romani and was a mediator, Zelinka from ​“Opatovský horní dvůr” with his son-in-law, and two men from Biskupice. After six months they returned home and Herák worked for a builder called Novák[2] who was building a road to Zlín.

Herák lived with his wife Albina in Pozlovice. They had two daughters, Andělka and Věruška. Their third son, Mireček, was born to Albina’s parents in the settlement of Chrástka near Luhačovice. Three days after the birth [15 March 1943][3] the gendarmes came for them and took them to the Sokol Hall in Luhačovice. The fact that his wife had just given birth was ignored and she was forced to walk there. Herák was given a beating because he, his wife and children had been staying in a village other than Pozlovice [where they had the right of abode] without registering with the local municipality. They were promised jobs in agriculture or in factories. He mentioned that the Czech gendarmes sometimes treated them worse than the Germans did. The gendarmes were glad that they were leaving, so they were able to enrich themselves by taking their property.

[Oldřich] Černocký [a peasant from Luhačovice] came to collect them from the Sokol Hall with a horse cart and helped the gendarmes take them to Uherský Brod to the Fuchs estate,[4] where there were already Jews and the criminal police. The women and men had their hair cut off and they were shaved and their clothes burned. For several days they had no food and the children cried of hunger. Herák, being considered a person of mixed race, was released, so he found food in the town, brought it to them and stayed with the others. Only Otakar Herák and his wife Ema and Rudolf István and his wife returned to Luhačovice. They then demanded the return of their houses and land, and so the secretary to the municipality [Ladislav] Kolář[5] arranged for them to be deported two months later.

Iren Herák and his family, along with others from Luhačovice, Biskupice, Pozlovice, Dolní Lhota and the surrounding area, were taken away in a freight train.[6] In Ostrava, the Gestapo took the train over from the Czech gendarmes and it then proceeded to Auschwitz without stopping

They arrived at the camp in the evening, and overnight their registration numbers were tattooed on their bodies: the adults on their forearms, the children on the outside of their thighs. In the morning, they were assigned accommodation in Block 12.[7] It was a long wooden building, with no windows, only a door on either side, and three tiers of beds along the walls. The block elders and kapos were Roma prisoners; they were better off because they robbed the others of their rations. In particular, he recalled Tonda Murka and Blažej Didy,[8] who was convicted after the war.[9]

The food in the camp was insufficient, with black coffee substitute and a piece of bread for breakfast. If someone saved it for later, it was often stolen. For lunch and dinner they were given beetroot soup, along with two or three (sometimes rotten) potatoes. They were hungry and thirsty, and ate also husks and roots. Those who dared to drink water from the swamp contracted fatal diarrhoea.

The work was hard and supervised by the camp guards, who were often cruel. Herák recalled a camp guard, who had a prisoner do push-ups in a gutter flowing with excrement as punishment because he worked slowly. The guard fell down dead after a while, which Herák believed was divine retribution; he became a believer as a result of this incident.

The survivor mentioned Otakar Herák from Luhačovice, who finished basic schooling and was apprenticed to Záhorovský as a joiner[10] and also learnt German. When they were distributing the beet soup around the blocks together, Otakar Herák tripped in his clogs and both of them fell with the container and spilled the soup. Thanks to his knowledge of German, Otakar was able to blame the fall on Iren Herák, who then received a punishment beating.

He also mentioned Jaroslav Herák from Luhačovice, who managed to escape with another prisoner. Iren Herák could have escaped with them, but he was afraid to do so. They were caught and hanged in the camp as a warning to the others.

Iren Herák fell ill with typhus and spent several weeks in the sick bay, but was saved by a doctor from Bojkovice.[11] He already had a number written on his chest, indicating that he was destined for the crematorium, but the aforementioned doctor declared that he could cure him, and Herák did indeed recover.

Transports with Jewish prisoners ended up in the crematorium, which did not have sufficient capacity. Herák describes how they had to dig a pit 10 metres by 10 metres, which was filled with petrol and set alight. The dogs then chased the newly arrived prisoners into the fire. Later, construction of the second crematorium began and Herák worked on the construction of the railway.[12] He came into contact with the newly arrived Jewish prisoners, from whom he sometimes managed to beg bread for himself and his wife. In one such loaf some cash had been baked, and in another a gold watch.

From Auschwitz, Iren Herák was transported to Buchenwald, and his wife to another camp further away.[13]

In Buchenwald they were accommodated in tents, the conditions there were a bit less harsh. After about three weeks, he was transferred to the Dora concentration camp. Here Herák expressed his appreciation for the light work he was assigned to: together with another prisoner, he had to make sure that the tarpaulins did not freeze; they built a fire to keep them warm, and on the fire they were able to bake potatoes, which the guards confiscated when the prisoners returned in the evening. Then one day the Dora camp was spotted by an aircraft and a three-day bombardment followed. After that, the prisoners were each given a piece of bread and a tin of pork and were transferred by train. After eating the greasy tinned food, starving prisoners died on the way. They eventually reached a barracks (Herak is not sure of the location, probably Magdeburg) where they were liberated by the Allies, and the Red Cross began to take care of them. They recuperated for three months before setting out for Prague, accompanied by the Russians, and Herák continued on to Pozlovice. Here he was reunited only with his wife Albina; their three children had died in Auschwitz.

[1] Forced labour for the firm Industrie-Baugesellschaft mbH at Enzesfeld in Lower Austria. (ed.)

[2] The firm of J. Novák, a civil engineer and builder in Prague VII, was responsible for road works on the Luhačovice — Zlín section. (ed.)

[3] The child was born on 12 March1943. (ed.)

[4] The buildings of the former Fuchs Estate are located in Malinovský Street in Uherský Brod.

[5] Ladislav Kolář was until 1945 secretary to the municipal authority in Luhačovice. (ed.)

[6] Transport to Auschwitz II — Birkenau on 19 March1943. (ed.)

[7] There were mostly German Roma in Block 12. (ed.)

[8] Blažej Didy was first a prisoner functionary at the Hodonín camp and then in the so-called Gypsy Camp at Auschwitz II – Birkenau. (ed.)

[9] Based on the verdict of the Special People’s Court (ref.no. LSp 341÷47−228) Blažej Didy was sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was reduced to 25 years’ imprisonment in a Presidential amnesty in 1955. In 1961 he was released on probation.

[10] Alois Záhorovský, a joiner at 57 Masarykova Street, Luhačovice. (ed.)

[11] He was most likely the Jewish physician, Dr. Wolf Rabinovich, who came from Romania but had studied medicine in Czechoslovakia before the war. He was deported to Terezín at the end of January 1943 and on 1 February he was deported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

[12] Landscaping works where the railway siding was extended from the main gate towards the crematorium. The area was called Bahnhof (literally station). (ed.)

[13] Transports on 2 August 1944 to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. (ed.)