“It happened on 18 January, and our parents… well, they called the police. The police came straight away – the gestapo from Letovice and gestapo from Bystřice. They ordered the local drummer to summon the people. He drummed people up – there were no loudspeakers in the village – at half past six in the evening. ‘Everybody must come to the pub; something has happened’. Whoever heard it came. The pub was packed, with children too, and the children cried. And the Germans were so rude to women because the children cried. One German said: ‘I’m hungry, Mr Innkeeper. Have you got anything to eat?’ Dad said: ‘I’ll give you head cheese – free. It’s our own, homemade. I don’t want you to pay – on the house.’ He said: ‘You’ll get arrested for that.’ When the German said that, dad went to mum and said: ‘Darling, they’ll arrest us. The German said that. But what about the kids?’’
“I ran away. They followed me and asked me for bread. I said: ‘Oh no, I have no bread.’ Because if I gave them a piece of bread, more would come out and they couldn’t all share it. Every time, I would say: ‘I’m not coming back there – they always want bread from me and I have none.’”
“They allocated about fifty to seventy grams [of meat per person]. It was always only about 10–12 kilos total, but five kilos for soup. – ‘Give us some bones, we’ll cook bones.’ So, they used to give them potatoes, swede, and a little meat – bare minimum, not much at all. The gendarmes, they enjoyed meat. They cooked well for them. Boženka, my schoolmate [the gendarmes’ cook Ms Pochopová] did not want to speak out about it after 1990. She didn’t want to lie, yet she didn’t want to tell the truth either, that the gendarmes cooked well for themselves.”
Full recordings
1
Památník holokaustu Romů a Sintů na Moravě, Hodonín u Kunštátu, 16.12.2021
Drahomíra Kahulová, née Francová, was born in Hodonín u Kunštátu on 13 November 1926. The witness’s mother Božena, née Nedomová, became a widow early (her husband František died due to complications caused by his World War I injuries in 1931). She remarried – butcher Vladimír Schwarz became the stepfather to her three daughters, and together they ran a pub and a butcher shop with a slaughterhouse. Drahomíra and her sisters graduated from a school of housewives in Boskovice. Sister Božena was deployed on forced labour in Stuttgart. During the existence of the ‘gypsy camp’ near Hodonín, the witness repeatedly delivered bills for meat to the camp because her stepfather had become one of the camp suppliers, and he visited the camp several times too. The pub the family operated was a major local hub both during and after the war. The gendarmes from the camp and partisans would all come there. A gendarme was shot there and then the gestapo interrogated Hodonín citizens there. Political prisoners would meet there with their relatives in the 1950s. Tough times came for Drahomíra with the collectivisation of agriculture; she would run a private farmstead until the 1980s. In addition, the state seized the pub in 1953. The witness tended to the homestead all her life, and even at a high age she still picks herbs. She lived in Hodonín u Kunštátu in 2022.
