Alois Holub

* 1917

  • "I was looking at him and then I noticed: our capo named Wolfrat was running toward us from the upper gate accompanied by two other men. They checked by the gate and then turned toward us and called out my number and the number of another man. Both of us stepped forward. Those two other men took our places and we followed our capo to the workshop. While we were passing through the gate I turned around and saw the rest of the transported people leaving somewhere. But no one knew where... Once again I tried to tell Sepp that I want to quit the job - I was working there for three years already - he told me: ´Do whatever you want. But Bachmayer won’t ask you if he comes that he wants to make another cassette. He won’t care when you’ll do it or where. So you better...you have a nice spot there, you can work quietly under the roof.´ I knew what he meant though...There were also times when I stepped by the Lageraltester at noon and the capo came there and told me: ´Lojzku, (Lojzku=informally Alois - translators note) I need the cassette tomorrow in the morning. I prepared everything at the workshop; I hid some of the material under my pants. I was always afraid to pass through the gate, because they might have checked through us. But we always made it somehow. Then I had to work all night so I could finish the cassette by morning. All I have had was a cup of sweet coffee and that was about it."

  • "There were few women, or girls that were pulled out of the gas chamber before their bodies were burned out. I saw them there just before some people came to take the pictures of them. It’s stupid, that you actually dream about what you’ve once lived through. So I tell to myself, that someone who never experienced this can’t see it in his dreams... (Laugh) Sometimes my mind goes back to the past and I wake up completely distressed...I once had a dream: We all were going to be executed and on the way we met Lageraltester and I told him: ´Well, well, you always know how to get...´ (laugh) what a situations those were. You either prepared yourself for that or you just keep repeating yourself the whole time: ´So many people died, one day I would die to anyway, so what...it’s just a split of a moment. And if there ain´t nothing I can do about it, why should I worry about it now?´ Sometimes you really believed that the end is coming: ´I will die, well...´And then when you got back to the reality again you were thinking:´ Oh no, it would be such a shame!´(laugh)"

  • "The Jews traveling with us, who came from all around the Brno town, they got the most attention. In the morning when we went to give our approval for the cremation, these Jews were lined up and they were so...They might have been lawyers or some officials...their faces were swollen blue and green. I heard that the Jews didn’t live longer than three days in Mauthausen. The SS officers used to train themselves on them. Our transport was the last one with Jews. No other Jews were taken to Mauthausen anymore."

  • "And if something went wrong, you could expect that it will be your turn now. I’m talking about some countryside commando, which was helping out at the farm. The SS officers held some party there, got some drinks and food, I don’t recall the purpose of it. And some of the alcohol got into the camp, so the whole command group has been executed. All of them. They went out to do their job, they worked - they were loading the trucks, driving them and while working they have been beaten. Those who still managed to come for lunch knew that they will stay there in the afternoon. And you saw the whole group...Or another time: ´Czechs, line up for the exercise!´ That was in 1942. Some people were late as they were jumping out of the windows to get to the Appellplaze. The SS officers were already waiting for them there. The people must have run, marched. They have been permanently beaten. The old people couldn’t run anymore so they were falling down. The SS officers have had their own ways... And once, during the governance of Heydrich, the Czechs have been treated just like Jews: less bread and anyone can slap them anytime. If you were standing alone somewhere and some German was passing by, he could do whatever he pleased with you and there was nobody to help you. But, maybe I’m forgetting the more important things. About 300 of the Sokol club members came. And all of them went t the gas chamber. All that stinky air coming out of the chimney...´

  • "In the morning, in fact it was three o’clock in the afternoon when the Germans were gathering. And then at 5pm Germans were coming to see the executions. I would say, it was about half or one third of all of us who got killed there. The rest of us went to Pod Kaštany place on October 8th 1941. There were about fifty prisoners there. In the morning, it was about 3am, we got some soup for the trip. Then in the morning they took us to the train station. We took off not knowing where to. We went to Vienna and then around the Danube River, all the way to the Mauthausen concentration camp."

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    Krnov, 06.10.2008

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Somehow I prepared myself for the reality that I´m going to die

Alois Holub
Alois Holub
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Mr. Alois Holub was born on June 11th, 1917 in the village of Bítovcice. In the years 1932-1936 he studied for a joiner in the famous master Jelínek´s workshop in Valašské Meziříčí. In 1938 he was called up to the army. He signed up in Jilemnice, but soon after that he was hospitalized in Jihlava due to a serious illness. (After the war he was permanently excluded off out of the armed services due to his weak health condition.) After returning from the hospital and the dissolution of the Czechoslovak army, he returned back to master Jelinek´s workshop in Valašské Meziříčí and worked as a carpenter. He met his friends here which helped him to join the illegal resistance activity organized by Czechoslovak Communist party. Mr. Holub entered the Czechoslovak Communist party on May 19th 1939, but he never had any big opportunites for further resistance activity. The whole resistance group was revealed in 1941 and Alois Holub has been arrested. He was immediately transported to Brno where he became a witness of the mass executions in Kounic Dormitory. After spending six months in the prison he was transported first to the detention camp in Brno, Pod Kaštany Street. After that he was taken to the concentration camp in Mauthausen. He worked there in the carpenter‘s workshop. Thanks to his know-how (he was making ornament boxes and cassettes decorated with inlay for the SS officers) he lived through to the end of the war. As the liberation was getting closer, the Germans built a tent ghetto (Zeltenlager) for Jews collected from other camps. Mr. Alois Holub used to bring groceries into this tent. Mr. Sinai Adler - the man saved by Mr. Holub - later published a book about the camp and he also nominated Mr. Holub for the ´Righteous among the Nations´ Award that is given by Jewish Yad Vashem Committee. Mr. Alois Holub was given the award. After the war Mr. Holub worked at the Rieger-Kloss organ factory.