Josef Salomonovič

* 1938

  • "I got the spoon as a child in Prague. Maybe already in Ostrava. My mother fed me with that spoon when I was three years old. In Prague, I had it at Brožíkova Street No. 1. And when we were packing my backpack with a potty, I had the spoon in my white winter coat, in my left pocket. I had it all the time in Łódži, but during the selection in Auschwitz they took everything from me, my coat with a spoon, my shoes. They threw it on piles of women's things. But when they found out they were male in the women's sauna, the supervisor brought me back to a pile of coats and pants, and I was able to take the coat in which the spoon was. So she survived. Then we went to a pile of shoes. We found mine right away, because they were the smallest on that pile of women's shoes. I put them on right away. "

  • "Everyone had their own blanket, which was very important. We didn't have beds, we lay on the ground next to each other, thus gaining warmth. I was lying next to my mother. The only room in the barracks, in quotation marks, was the warden. There was also a toilet with a flush, which we were not allowed to use. My extremely brave mother picked me up at midnight, I was not allowed to talk, we walked down the aisle and went to where the warden was. Next to her room was the shell. My mother was pulling a string and water was running, which I was terribly surprised at. She took a handful of water and gave me a drink. It was normal water, we didn't get one. And we went back to bed again. "

  • "When we came to Svatava, they crammed us into a barracks. I had twenty-one ulcers all over my body. It was from the bad food. The worst was were on my back. My legs were good because I was the only one with good shoes from Bata. I cried terribly. The people in the barracks were tired and said to my mother, 'Put him out, put him out, we can't sleep.' So the mother organized a box in which they put sawdust and wool. They put it in front of the house and put me there. It was March or April, considering that in February there was a raid and then cleaning work. Maybe it was the beginning of April. The nights were still quite cold. I was lying outside, my mother and brother were inside in a woman's barracks. I was completely at the end of my strength. And then I had my last conversation with the Lord, with God. I said, 'Dear Lord, let me die.' But I didn't die. The God either did not hear me, or the God does not exist."

  • "Every day, of course, my mother asked me what I had been doing all day. And I say, 'I stood by the barbed wire where the German tram, German cars, and German wagons rode, and I stuck my tongue out at them.' when they gathered people for transport. In the middle, the Germans moved freely. And I stuck my tongue out at them. And mother: 'You must not, they will punish you!' And she started yelling at me. I said I'm not stupid, I always put my hand in front of my mouth so they wouldn't see it. That was my fight against the Germans. I knew who was good and who was bad.

  • "They put on a white winter coat, I remember exactly. He survived it with me. With that, I came again after the war. Also white lace-up shoes. And the mother took a strainer. She came to Łódže with the strainer and they said, 'What is it?' She said, 'It is a strainer. I don't like it when milk is boiled and there is a shell on top. Odstranit They laughed at it for half an hour. Within a day, the mother realized that there was no milk. So she took it badly with her. "

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    v Ostravě, 19.08.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 03:56:22
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Ostrava, 20.08.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 03:39:13
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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Dear God, let me die, but God either did not hear me, or did not exist

Josef Salomonovic as a child, Ostrava, 1945
Josef Salomonovic as a child, Ostrava, 1945
photo: archiv Josefa Salomonoviče

Josef Salomonovič was born on July 1, 1938 into a Jewish family in Ostrava. In November 1941, he and his parents and older brother were deported to the ghetto in Łódži on Nazi-occupied Polish territory. In 1944, they were transferred to Auschwitz and then to the Stutthof concentration camp, where his father was murdered by a phenol injection to heart. At the end of 1944, a transport followed to Dresden, where his mother and brother worked in an ammunition factory. In February 1945, they survived the bombing of Dresden. In April, they escaped from the death march in the West Bohemian borderland, were hidden by a farmer from the village of Brnířov for several days, and then were liberated by the American army. After the war, they returned to Ostrava. Josef graduated from grammar school and mechanical engineering. He worked in the Ostrava smelters and mines and in the Coal Research Institute. In 1971 he married a girl from Vienna and legally moved to Austria. He worked in Vienna as a sales representative for an engineering company. During his visits to Czechoslovakia, he faced pressure to cooperate with the State Security. He was banned from entering Czechoslovakia as an unwanted person for about eight years. In retirement, he began to intensively map the history of the family’s imprisonment in Nazi camps. He talked about the experiences of a child who survived the Holocaust in lectures around the world.