Ing. Jaroslav Hnátek

“In April 1943 my father and uncle were sent to Terezín, and after a week taken from there to Auschwitz, after another half a year to Buchenwald, then after a month to the camp Dora-Sangerhausen. When the end of the war approached, they were transported to the camp Bergen-Belsen. Dad worked for the company Hoch-Tief during his internment in Bergen-Belsen. He was released on May 31 from the assembly camp in Celle near Hanover. When he returned, his health deteriorated. Nobody returned from concentration camps in good physical condition. Even when they heard the subtlest sound, former prisoner would turn their heads to see if there was some informer or a German officer walking behind them. That was not so much in case of my dad, he has coped fairly well with the situation, but others suffered from this for a long time. I didn’t ask my father about his experiences from the concentration camps, he only said something when he himself wanted to. I remember that he told us that while in Auschwitz, the later Polish Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz once slammed him so hard that he fell to the ground. It was something similar to Antonín Zápotocký, when the later Dutch accused him of being a kapo in Buchenwald, and treating the prisoners just like Cyrankiewicz. Dad also recalled that he was picking cigarette stubs, which smokers threw away in the prison’s yard, with a pointed stick, and then rolling them into cigarettes for uncle. Dad himself smoked cigars, but he was able to live in the prison without them.”