Zdeněk Serinek

* 1967

  • “99 % of my granddad’s story came to me through his autobiography, which was published as the Czech Gypsy Rapsody in 2016, as grandfather had hardly ever been discussed at home. When we used to ask about him, people would immediately start changing the subject: ,Finished your homework? Know your tables? Sharpened your pencils?’ They always started talking about something else. We never knew why. In a way, we didn’t really find out until we were grown up. As young kids, we were aware that our grandfather had been a Rom and a freedom-fighter, but we didn’t really realize just how renowned or important he had been in the resistance movement. Neither did we know about his real activities during the Second World War. Nothing at all. Or the fact that he had been imprisoned at the camp in Lety u Písku, none of this was known to us. We, the grandchildren, didn’t find out about this until we were grown up. And we didn’t learn from our parents. Of his second family, none of the three children lived to see, none of them witnessed the release of his memoir in 2016.”

  • “He didn’t trust people because at the camp in Lety he witnessed, he personally saw, a young girl, who had got lost in the forest, being tortured to death. While she was hungry, she picked a few blueberries, and the Czech police officers and some kapos beat her to death. Although according to the recorded dates, granddad only spent about six weeks at the camp, he witnessed seventeen instances of such torture to death. Seventeen in six weeks! And he stresses that they were Czech police officers, there were no Germans at the camp. So, I tend to believe that his memories were so disturbing, he didn’t even want to share them with his children.”

  • “You could say, what struck me the most was where he got the courage to flee the camp, as he must have known it would have consequences for his family.” – “Do you mean flee the camp at Lety?” – “Precisely, flee the Lety camp. He didn’t run alone though, he ran with his nephew and another guy, and their plan was to free the prisoners. Unfortunately, while they were being chased by different groups of people – the villagers, foresters, police officers, Germans – they kept getting further and further from Lety. In the end, he was left alone and quite far from the camp, he was at the end of his tether, and he changed his plans. He didn’t officially find out that his family had all perished at the camp until after the war.”

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    Praha, 13.04.2022

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We didn’t learn about it all until we were grown up...

Zdeněk Serinek with his grandmother Marie (Josef Serinek smoking a pipe on the very right).
Zdeněk Serinek with his grandmother Marie (Josef Serinek smoking a pipe on the very right).
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Zdeněk Serinek was born on December 14, 1967, in Ústí nad Orlicí as the first—born son of Zdeněk Serinek and the first grandson of Josef Serinek, a Sinto Rom, the so-called Black Partisan and commander of one of the freedom-fighting units in Vysočina Highlands. Josef Serinek’s memoir was released, care of Robert Krumphanzl, in 2016 by Triáda publishing house under the title Česká cikánská rapsodie (the Czech Gypsy Rapsody). The historian and Charter-77 signatory Josef Tesař, whose life was dramatically shaped by his collections of freedom-fighters’ accounts, recorded the memories between 1963-1964. Zdeněk Serinek did not learn about his grandfather’s past as a partisan until he started attending primary school in Bystré u Poličky. His grandfather’s Sinto-Romani identity and his life’s adventures had been taboo in the family. Zdeněk Serinek trained as a machine fitter and after graduation worked at a cooperative farm. Between 1987-1989 he served in the army with railway troops. In the early 1980s and then again after 1990, he travelled with showpeople. He has been actively promoting Josef Serinek’s life story and raising public awareness regarding victims of Romani holocaust. He regularly participates on the Black Partisan Initiative’s events or the annual commemoration of the Lety-u-Písku concentration camp. He appeared in Vera Lacková’s documentary “How I Became a Partisan” (released in 2021). Since 2010, he has been a member of the executive committee and the coach of Kopidlno football club. In 2022, he was living in Kopidlno.