Karel's second boy
A year or so between you.
You were a genuine surprise
Your name popped up out of nowhere one day
Having never been mentioned before
Suddenly you were there
Part of the picture without any of the detail.
We wondered what you were like.
Did you dote on your brother? Follow him about everywhere, learn from his every move? Or did you get on each others nerves? Maybe a bit of both perhaps at different times …
Did you try on your mother's hats? Were you a willing dressmaker's helper? Or did you find it difficult to stand still?
We just don't know, you see …
Did you like animals?
Or motorcars, like your father?
Did you enjoy school? Or working with your hands?
Did you have a girlfriend? Or never have time for all that.
We looked for traces of you everywhere, some hint of things you might have done.
Were you a soldier, had you ever been in trouble with the police, or …
We wondered …
If you had sailed to New York on one of those big passenger ferries,
And smiled at Lady Liberty as you entered the bay, feeling pleased you’d finally made it.
Maybe you ended up in Chicago thinking it was more your kinda scene.
For months your name, the fact of your birth, was all we had and then …
A light bulb moment ….
A search of Arolsen Archives
Name: Bruno ——— Surname: Tichý ———
Returned further evidence of you, a lead. The thing we'd been dreaming of. A typed document in German came back, with the names of you and your parents recognisable to us at the top.
Five minutes or so after receiving this reward
We learned
The document was the findings of an International Trace …
Performed in Nineteen Sixty Eight …
You were
Used for forced labour … a Postal Clerk.
You
Deserted.
Were
Arrested.
In Jena.
Sent to Römhild,
Imprisoned.
April Nineteen Forty Five.
A fellow prisoner supposedly went to your mother and told her this story.
Many forced labourers from Eastern Europe were imprisoned at Römhild , for “Loitering” or “Breach of Contract”. - The definitions were interpretive …
Put to the hardest labour in the basalt quarry.
Usually not for too long about six weeks or so before being sent back to your post …usually … some ended up dead of course, or were sent to Buchenwald, the concentration camp.
It is estimated, around five hundred died at the Römhild Prison Camp overall.
The next bit is hard to stomach…
Here’s the thing …
The Germans had lost the war, it was over. They were done, finished.
We’re still in the month of April, Nineteen Forty Five
It is now the day of evacuation from camp
Up to ninety two people who couldn't make the march were herded into a sand cave and shot, the entrance blown up.
They couldn’t just let people go …
The fellow prisoner told your mother he believed you were dead.
We don’t know the exact, date, location, or cause, of your death, nor ever likely will.
Your killers were not in the habit of keeping records of their crimes.
We know you never returned home from the war.
That you never got to live your life, or marry, or have children if you wished.
That you never saw your family again.
That you likely died at the age of twenty three.
There is every possibility you were shot and died in that cave.
Or somewhere else along the way.
It may be that in spite of that kind prisoner's message, your mother or brother, still needed certain assurances, perhaps it was they who ordered the trace …
We don’t know, we will attempt to find out what more we can.
Find assurances of our own.
It is hard to know how best to honour you …
If I have learned anything about your parents and brother, I like to imagine there's a goodness and a kindness to you, a sweet gentleness, with strength, resilience and a strong sense of justice and healthy dose of rebelliousness … Your family were never ones to sit back and take the easy road, they got stuck in, got their hands dirty. They did things, said things where others would not. Perhaps you were the quiet one, but by the looks of things, when pushed, you knew how to act, you knew what was right.
Perhaps with bombs beating down overhead you had to run, you had no choice, or perhaps, with the war nearly over, you saw your chance and took it.
I know it cost you, but I'm glad you ran,
Good!
Damn them.
Your story ended badly, in enslavement, and murder.
You were wronged.
You were a victim.
There's no making a right of it.
There's no making this lament pretty with nice rounded finish
We are speaking of the atrocities of war after all.
A senselessness and horror that cannot be quantified or explained.
We are heartbroken.
Devastated to learn your fate.
How unfortunate that our first real introduction should be the news of your brutal, needless, and premature death.
With emotion catching in our throats, threatening to give way to frustration and anger.
We had hoped if we were lucky that we could meet your children, they would be around the same age as my mother and uncle …
Or your children’s children, who would be the same age as my siblings and myself …
Alas it was not to be, it was not to be …
I write these words to make them live, send them out there in the hope they mingle with your spirit somewhere.
You were missing and now are found, Dear Bruno.
We hold you close in our hearts and in our loving memory.
May you Rest in Everlasting Peace.
By Robyn Hunt (c) 2024
‘For as long as we live, they too will live, for they are now a part of us…’ From: ‘We Remember Them’ by Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Riemer
In Honour of a Beloved Uncle and Great Uncle
- IF YOU ENJOYED THE POEM, HAVE A LISTEN TO A READING OF IT, JUST CLICK ON THE LITTLE ARROW.
POSTSCRIPT
Since writing the above, as promised our search for Bruno has continued. It is a sad truth that our file on him is still comprised of the same two documents, his Birth Certificate from Bilina, and the precious, and all-important International Trace document housed within the Arolsen Archives. We have scoured everywhere from Museums and Archives to District Offices and Employment Agencies throughout Germany and the Czech Republic, and so far, we have not found anything to connect him to forced labour or the prison camp. We do not give up hope, we still have certain irons in the fire, and should this yield any results, I will update this Postscript accordingly.
New information has recently come to light however, in the form of a testimony from Bruno’s brother himself, during an interrogation conducted by the Czech Authorities in 1947, my grandfather states that, in May 1942 he went to the cinema with his brother in Kolín and was waiting in line at the ticket booth when a drunken German man pushed in front of them in the queue. The cashier lady then sold this man a ticket immediately without taking issue. When it was their turn to be served my grandfather and great uncle questioned what the cashier lady had done, at which point the German man turned towards them and flashed his police badge, to their horror they realised this man was a member of the Gestapo and they were immediately arrested. They were put in separate cells and given a declaration to sign. My grandfather was told that his brother had signed it, so without reading it my grandfather signed the declaration and was released.
However, the truth was that Bruno had not signed the declaration and was not permitted to leave. Eventually a German Postmaster from his work came and vouched for him and he was initially released, but the damage was done. He was soon spirited away to Germany under Total Deployment.
The interview and additional references to Bruno in my grandfather’s papers seem to support the specific claim that he died on the Evacuation March itself, rather than being shot in the cave. How my grandfather could know this detail with absolute certainty is unclear, but the particular claim is repeated more than once.
At least we now know the story of how Bruno was taken.
I had certainly played the imagined scene of Bruno being taken in my head many times, but hearing the reality, and the detail of it … the truth is so much worse than anything I could’ve imagined. We can only speculate as to the amount of pain my grandfather must have felt in the event of his little brother being taken, an event which led to a horrible, dreadful, inevitable fate, that he was powerless to prevent.
