The so-called Gypsy camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu

Introduction

On July 10, 1942, in line with the Commanding General of the SS, the commander-in-chief of the Protectorate ununiformed police force issued a decree on the combating of the Gypsy nuisance in compliance with which the police authorities and gendarmerie stations conducted censuses of all “Gypsies, Gypsy half-breeds and persons of Gypsy habit of life”. This census registered over 6,500 persons.

This was the beginning of the subsequent deportations into the newly established Gypsy camps. The camp Lety u Písku was to accommodate Roma families from Bohemia and the Moravian Roma were forced to report or were escorted to a similar camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu. The Romani people who survived the internment and hard labour in the camp or those who were not exceptionally released were deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau from the spring of 1943 onwards based on the decree of the Commander of the SS and the Chief of the German Police, Heinrich Himmler, on the camp concentration of the Romanies in the German Reich and in the occupied European countries (the “Auschwitz Erlass” as of December 16, 1942). The journey was of no return for the crushing majority of these Roma men, women and children.

1940 – 1943

On August 10, 1940, a forced labour camp was opened in Hodonín u Kunštátu at the location of the Gypsy camp for persons unable to prove a legal source of livelihood, which included a small number of Roma (5-10 %, in winter months up to 20 %). This forced labour camp was only formally renamed to the “collection camp” on January 1, 1942, but the prisoners were still only adult and healthy men – capable of maximum working capacity. The ill ones had their sentence interrupted and were sent home. A fundamental change occurred on August 2, 1942, when the Gypsy camp was opened. Its operation and functioning were in marked contrast to the previous camp types. The previous collection camp was abolished and all of the prisoners, with the exception of the Roma, were released. Thus the Roma became the first internees of the new “Gypsy camp”.

The establishment of this type of a “Gypsy” family camp was preceded by the decree on the combating the Gypsy nuisance as of July 10, 1942. This document became the groundwork for the last stage of the process against the Gypsies in the Protectorate. This last phase was characterized by an undisguised racist approach towards the Gypsies. Between March 1939 and the summer of 1942, the Gypsy issue in the Protectorate was addressed within the framework of a fight against  social outcasts and work-shy people. It brought a new openly public racial foundation which was manifested also in the decree's title that avowedly defined the objective of the struggle – the Gypsy nuisance. The decreed census of all “Gypsies and Gypsy half-breeds” rested apparently in the same racial foundation and its obvious aim was to obtain an overview of the number of people who would be affected by the new administrative order. The census which registered the members of the “Gypsy race” (i.e. no longer including the “white gypsies”, i.e. those with of Gypsy habit of life, but non-Roma ethnically) was not yet implemented in the Protectorate. Already on the date of the census (August 2, 1942), the opening of the Gypsy camps took place and some of the families were directly deported after the registration. The models for the establishment of such camps were the already existing facilities in Austrian Lackenbach. As opposed to the previous types of camps, whole Roma families that qualified for the preventive police custody were to be placed in the camps, i.e. including women, children, elderly and the ill. At the proposal of the individual gendarmerie stations, selected Roma individuals together with their families were included in transports deporting them to Lety u Písku in Bohemia and Hodonín u Kunštátu in Moravia.

Similarly to Lety u Písku, in the early August 1942 individuals and entire families were forced into the collection camp. Future prisoners from the close environs were coming on foot or on their horse-drawn wagons. Those from further away were first concentrated in Brno forced labour centre and then deported to their destination en masse.

On their arrival to the camp, the prisoners had to submit to compulsory hygiene. In most cases they had their heads shaved, which was – particularly to the Roma women – very humiliating. Their identity cards – the so-called Gypsy cards issued in compliance with Law No. 117/1927 Coll. – were confiscated together with all of their property – their wagons and horses, jewellery and cash. There were not enough government-issued clothes for everyone and they were mostly distributed only to those working outside the camp. Women and children wore their own clothes, usually very shabby, and walked barefoot.
When the camp was put into operation, it had only wooden houses. Three large ones were used for accommodating the prisoners (men and women in separate quarters) and four buildings were used for ensuring the camp's operation. More buildings were gradually added to the camp's premises first by purchased old wooden houses inside the camp and later by brick-buildings on a newly acquired plot. Despite its larger size the capacity was still not enough to sustain the number of prisoners. Further plans on the camp's expansion were not implemented due to the decreed transports of its dwellers into the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The accommodation capacity was 200 persons and later that year in the summer already 300, but the actual number of prisoners exceeded the capacity several times shortly after its opening. In total, 1,396 Roma men, women and children (who accounted for up to 30 % of all prisoners) were detained in the camp during its existence. 34 children were born in these absolutely unsuitable conditions. All of these children died save for one.

The total of 207 people fell victim to the epidemic – chiefly the typhoid fever epidemic – and poor living conditions.
The camp's commander was the administrative official Štefan Blahynka. The guardsmen totalled roughly 40 men. The entire personnel were Czech.

The fit-for-work prisoners, including women and youth, performed either auxiliary or cleaning work in the camp and its surroundings, but particularly laboured at the construction of the road sections Štěpánov n. Svratkou – Hodonín – Rozseč n. Kunštátem. This entailed work in a stone quarry, loading the stones on wheel barrows, their transport, discharge and manual crushing the stone into gravel; toil in which also women participated, often with children on their backs. Further tasks involved excavation work, removal of earth and occasional fieldwork with the local farmers.  The prisoners did not receive any wages for this work. Primarily as a result of this work outside the camp, 47 prisoners managed to escape.
The prisoners were getting meals three times a day but only the very essentials. The strict camp code imposed by the military-police regime, heavy work that the Roma were not accustomed to, small rations, overcrowded houses and insufficient hygiene were at the core of overall deterioration of their health condition further compounded by their mental state. The disruption of families (accommodation was divided according to the prisoners’ sex, only the youngest children were left with their mothers), the vital Romani social bond, caused passivity turning into depression and apathy of the prisoners who perceived the situation as hopeless.

Catastrophic accommodation, catering and sanitary conditions lead to chronic morbidity in the prisoners. The peak occurred at the turn of the years 1942 and 1943 when a typhoid fever epidemic struck that caused the highest mortality rate of the detainees. At its outset, the ill were sent to the Provincial Hospital in Brno for treatment. After the full outbreak of the epidemic, the ill became isolated in a special house in the camp. The deceased were first buried in the camp in nearby Černovice (73 persons) and after the epidemic started taking its full toll, at a makeshift cemetery near the camp in mass graves (121 persons).
The camp was not an extermination camp, yet as a result of inhuman conditions a substantial part of the detained men, women and especially children lost their lives here. Imminent death was also awaiting most of those who were deported en masse to Auschwitz. Almost everyone in the first transport (December 7, 1942, 91 persons) destined for Auschwitz I died within a very short period thereafter. The only survivors of the other two transports (August 21, 1943 – 749 persons and January 27, 1944 – 31 persons) to the “Gypsy Camp” in Auschwitz II-Birkenau were those who were relocated for work to other camps. Only around one tenth of the original Roma population survived the Nazi terror. Out of the total number of roughly 5,500 Roma who were forcibly deported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 583 ex-prisoners came back after the liberation. The genocide of Bohemian and Moravian Roma and Sinti was one of the most thoroughly conducted genocide of World War II because almost complete extermination of the Romani people took place.

Gypsy camps in the territory of the Protectorate were abolished before the end of 1943. The Lety camp was closed in August of 1943 and Hodonín towards the end of the same year.

After the abolishing of the “Gypsy camp”

This location's history did not end with the closing of the Gypsy camp. From the early 1944, a branch of the labour education camp in the nearby Mladkov opened here. It was replaced by a training centre for soldiers before their deployment to the front line toward the end of the war.

After the liberation, the camp became temporarily occupied by the Romanian army and housed an infirmary for injured soldiers of the Red Army. From December of 1945 until November of 1946, it was used as a collection centre for temporary concentration of Moravian Germans who could not be deported as part of the ongoing organized expulsion due to their physical condition. Even here, the poor living conditions, insufficient diet and sanitary situation resulting in the epidemic of typhoid fever took their toll among the elderly, who constituted the majority of the dwellers. Some of them are also buried in the camp's small cemetery.

Another forced labour camp was run here between 1949 and 1950. The imprisoned were people avoiding work and endangering the economic life of the society: persons convicted on the basis of laws on the protection of the Republic and on the fight against the black market, persons sentenced for administrative delinquencies or otherwise dangerous persons to the people's democratic régime. We still do not dispose of comprehensive materials on its history. It was in operation for one year and the dismantlement works terminated on December 31, 1950.

For numerous years, the camp's site was used as a recreation facility of the cement and lime works Cemo Mokrá and a summer camp for children.

The premises of the original camp – the current recreation establishment – is presently in the process of being purchased from the private proprietor by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR that is planning to develop an educational centre in expert collaboration with the Museum of Romani Culture. Its chief scope is going to be education on holocaust and wider history and culture of the Roma (for further details refer to the Museum's study).

Preserved buildings from the former Gypsy camp

At its opening, the so-called Gypsy camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu had only wooden hoses. Three large ones served as lodging facilities for the prisoners and four smaller ones safeguarded the camp's operation. The construction of the camp was gradually completed first by purchased old wooden houses inside the camp and later by brick-houses on the acquired plot. Despite the construction, its capacity did not suffice for the high number of prisoners. Further plans for its expansion were eventually not put into practice due to the decreed deportations of the dwellers to Auschwitz.

After the war, the camp's premises did not see many changes. The new brick-houses outside the original camp's ground plan were demolished and the prisoners’ houses were naturally modernized and adapted to the accommodation and boarding of the holidaymakers over time. A swimming pool was built on the site, too.
Only two original buildings of the camp were preserved intact, first of which is a wooden detention house No. 3 that used to have two rooms for collective use – one spacious room for sleeping and a space for washing. It is 16 metres long and 8 metres wide. The access to the house is through a gable wall. The panel walls have small windows composed of six window panes. At present they are used as a storage place and a pub called “Krmelec”.

The second preserved building is a wooden house No. 11 that was originally used as an administrative building of the camp (probably housing the quarters of the guards and other staff). At present, it is used for accommodation within the framework of the recreation facility.

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