František Kraus

„My detention in Ruzyň lasted one year already, when I have tried to commit suicide by running my head against the central heating. Then the doctor ordered I must not be left alone in the cell. You wouldn’t believe who was put in my cell: the former Gestapo commander in Brno. The cell was virtually empty: no seat, no bed nor a small table – nothing! There was only a toilet. Everything was closed up in the wall. At ten o’clock p.m. came the guard and opened the bed. You had to sleep with your arms on the top of the blanket, so it would be clear you were not committing suicide. In the cell across the corridor was placed Slánský. The small window in his cell doors was opened all the time. There was sitting a guard on a bar stool and was permanently watching him.”

„In August 1942 I got a summons to the transport BA. I hang a number 63 on my neck. Everybody had to come with 50 kilo luggage into the Palace of Fair. On the cement floor were painted white squares with numbers, so everybody knew where to sit. The procedure took three days. We had to sign an agreement that we voluntarily hand over our property to Germans, including the house key. Our papers were marked by big ‘J’, which meant ‘a Jew’. After 1.000 people got ready, we were escorted to the railway station Bubeneč at four o’clock in the morning and we left for Terezin.”

„In 1959 I was exposed to a trial. I wanted to get out of the prison, so I agreed to become an agent of the State Security (StB). Chief of the labor camp summoned me to his office: ‘Look, if you will not sign it, all your appeals will be turned down.’ Someone was able to resist, but I was not. The third time I have signed. I had been in jail eight years for nothing. So I have tried it. I had no idea what it would practically mean in the future. Once a year they called me. We met somewhere in Prague. They have asked if everything was all right, if I needed something. That was all. But they were still keeping an eye on me and waiting. Finally I got a high position in Czech Jewish community in 1986. Their opportunity came. A StB officer called me by phone that a secret circumcision would happen at rabbi’s place. I had to forbid to all my employees to attend it. But one refused to comply. Immediately after the circumcision the StB officer called me again: ‘You have to sack him.’ So I fired him.”

„I got a summons to the transport eastwards in December 1943, just before Christmas. Tracks were already laid all the way to the Terezin Ghetto. We were loaded on railway trucks and three days we rode to east. In the middle of the night we arrived to Auschwitz. Camp Birkenau was three kilometers away approximately, so we were reloaded on trucks. They drove us straight to the gas chambers. One half of the building we came into constituted real showers, the second one the gas chamber. The gas chamber was situated downstairs, but this we didn’t know. Each of us – there were one thousand people in the transport – was completely shaved and got a number. They tattooed on my forearm the number 170464. In fact the numbers meant we were not going straight to the gas chamber.”