Today the "Black Partisan", Josef Serinek, would be 125 years old, a Czechoslovak Romani hero whose fight against the Nazis must never be forgotten

After the war Serinek settled in Svitavy, where he ran a pub called “U partyzána” [At the Partisan’s]. He earned several medals for his heroic actions, but his life story was then forgotten for quite some time.

Josef Serinek was born on 25 February 1900 in Bolevec near Pilsen. He came from a Romani family and already from his youth had to cope with the difficulties that life entailed for Romani people in the newly independent Czechoslovakia.

During the First World War, Serinek was conscripted into the military but refused to fight for Austria-Hungary and deserted. As a 16-year-old he joined a German Romani group that hid in the forest.

After the First World War, Serinek apprenticed as a gardener and worked as a manual laborer. He married Pavlína Janečková, with whom he had five children.

In 1942, Serinek and his family were arrested by gendarmes of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and on 3 August of that same year they were deported to the concentration camp in Lety u Písku. After spending a month and a half in the camp, upon experiencing the executions of his fellow prisoners, he understood that he would soon be next, so on 15 September 1942 he, his brother Karel, and two other prisoners escaped.

Josef Serinek’s plan to return to Lety and liberate the rest of his family never came to pass. He was persecuted by the gendarmerie and hid from them for a year.

It was not until the war was over that Serinek learned his wife and all their children had fallen victim to the Holocaust of the Roma – some of them were murdered in Lety and the rest after being transported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. After escaping with his brother, they robbed the cottages of several hunters, armed themselves with hunting weapons, and did their best to fight the Nazis.

Josef gradually lost the friends with whom he was escaping. In the spring of 1943, his brother Karel was also murdered by the gendarmes who were combing the South Bohemian forests under the leadership of the Nazis, searching for partisans.

Josef Serenik evaded his pursuers, was left on his own, and went into hiding for one year, doing his best to find other freedom fighters. He relocated to the Vrchovina (Highlands) area, where he managed to contact the Council of Three (R3) resistance group and started to build a partisan division, predominantly working with escaped Soviet prisoners of war.

That division, known as the “Čapajev” division, was more often nicknamed the “Black Division” after the skin color of its commander, and undertook armed actions against the Nazis and their henchmen. Among their most famous paramilitary operations was an attack on the gendarmerie station in Přibyslav, where the partisans shot five gendarmes who had been involved in the murder of General Vojtěch Luža.

“Josef never just captured any gendarmes, he always remembered the atrocities and crimes committed by the gendarmes against the defenseless prisoners of the Lety camp,” activist Miroslav Brož commented on that paramilitary action to news server Romea.cz. After the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Serinek opened a pub called “U partyzána” [At the Partisan’s] in Svitavy and started a new family.

After the currency reform in 1953, Serinek was forced to close the pub and worked for the rest of his life in a brickyard as a warehouse worker. He was awarded the Medal of Merit and the Czechoslovak Partisan Badge, but his life story was forgotten for quite some time.

Serinek dictated his memoirs to the historian Jan Tesař, and that became the basis of the book Česká cikánská rapsodie [Bohemian Gypsy Rhapsody]. Today a memorial plaque in Svitavy and a memorial linden tree planted in his honor commemorate his deeds.

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