At the Hodonín ‘Gypsy camp’

From August 1942, a part of the Romani population in Moravia was deported to Hodonín u Kunštátu, a penal labour camp that had been run by the Protectorate government since August 1940. Within a year, almost 1,400 men, women and children were sent to the camp, which, strongly resembling a concentration camp, now functioned as a ‘Gypsy camp’. There they suffered from malnutrition, a lack of drinking water and poor hygienic conditions as well as appalling living quarters in overcrowded wooden barracks, confiscated wagons and even tents. All persons above the age of ten had to perform forced labour. Acts of violence by the Czech overseers exacerbated the already dire situation. At least 207 internees fell victim to the horrific conditions and the rampant epidemics arising from the lack of medical care. From the Hodonín camp, internees were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. At first, those Roma stigmatized as ‘asocial’ and thus deemed undesirable were deported. The majority of the camp’s inmates were then transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp on 21 August 1943. Relatives of Karel Holomek, whose names are not known, sent him this brief postcard from the Hodonín camp; at the time, Holomek was deployed in a forced labour detail at a quarry in Olšovec, a satellite camp of a ‘correctional labour camp’ in Brno. In the postcard they informed him of their imminent transportation to an unknown destination. The Hodonín camp was disbanded at the beginning of December 1943.

After years of controversy, the Czech state acquired the grounds of the former camp in 2009 to establish a memorial site.