Rosína Holomková

Rosína Holomková was born in the Roma settlement at Hraničky in the district of Hodonín, on the border of the municipalities of Svatobořice and Kyjov. Her parents, Pavel and Terezie Holomek, had six children altogether. She did not know her eldest brother Barnabáš, who died in the first year of his life. She grew up with her brothers Štěpán, Stanislav, Tomáš and Čeněk. Her father was a horse trader and a respected person in Hraničky, a so-called vajda. He managed to save enough money to buy a house in Svatobořice in the local poor district of Hliník. The family moved there in December 1917 and the children were able to start school. Rosína was too old to attend school, however, so she went to work as a labourer on construction sites. She married Antonín Holomek and their children Miroslav, Emílie and Stanislav were born.[1] In 1933 the family moved to Nesovice.

[1] Miroslav Holomek, CSc., in the years 1969 – 1973 chairman of The Union of Gypsies-Roma; see the database for the testimony of Emílie (married name Machálková).

Rosína Holomková survived the war with her husband and children in Nesovice thanks to the local mayor, Josef Kilián, who, together with the commander of the gendarmerie station [Ladislav] Holas, managed to save the family from Nazi persecution. [In March 1943], Rosína’s parents were deported from Svatobořice, but they managed to secure their release from the collection point by means of bribes. They then hid in the woods near Nesovice and Rosína Holomková brought them food. They were apprehended in the woods and imprisoned, probably as a result of a denunciation. Pavel Holomek was then included in the transport sent on 21 August 1943 from Brno to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where he died. Rosína Holomek’s mother, Terezia Holomková, survived because she contracted pneumonia as a result of her long stay in the forest: she was not deported – probably because she was thought to be dying. However, she managed to recover.