We were not allowed to ask when we were children; it was a taboo.
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Cecilie Machovčáková, née Murková, was born in Veselá near Slušovice on 28 April 1948. Her mother Hedvika Heráková and father Antonín Murka came from indigenous Moravian Romany people and grew up in Moravian Wallachia. During World War II, they were both deported to the ‘gypsy camp’ in Hodonín u Kunštátu. Father Antonín managed to escape in the spring of 1943 and he hid with small farmers in the vicinity of Zlín. In 1944 he joined the Jan Žižka Partisan Brigade and, under the nickname Tonda Cigán (Tony Gypsy), fought near Prlov and Ploština and took part in the liberation of Vizovice on 5 May 1945. Antonín’s brother Rudolf was the only holocaust survivor from their immediate family. Witness’s mother Hedvika gave birth to son Antonín in the ‘gypsy camp’ in Hodonín u Kunštátu, but he died two months later. In August 1943, Hedvika along with most involuntary denizens of the Hodonínek were taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Following internment in the ‘gypsy camp’ within Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of her family members died, she went to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived a death march in April 1945 and lived to see liberation. The parents decided to live together again several years after the war. Initially, they lived near Lípa, and from the 1960s on, they lived in Podvesná in Gottwaldov in one half of a Baťa semi house. The father made his living working with the Pozemní stavby construction firm. Cecilie grew up the oldest of nine children. She wished to study an art school in Uherské Hradiště very much but had to go to work after completing the 9th grade to help mum manage their family budget. She worked in a shoe stitching shop at Svit all her life. She and husband Petr Machovčák raised a son and daughter, but Cecilie was widowed soon. She worked until retirement. She was living in Zlín in 2022.
