Location
Česko > Středočeský kraj > okres Benešov > Olbramovice > Křešice u Olbramovic
Location Details: Village square, wayside chapel
Coordinates
49.659714, 14.610441
Type
Wall plaque, exterior, Holocaust monument / memorial
Location
Killing site, Public street or square
Textual Content
Dedication, Historical narrative
Languages
Czech
Whom the Monument Commemorates
Victims of concentration camps, Death transports, Victims of Nazism, Jewish victims
Victims of a death transport shot in Křešice on 1 May 1945
Iconographical Subject
Cross, Flower, Human figure
Material
Granite
Dimensions
Width: 67 cm
Height: 25 cm
Dates
A rectangular memorial plaque is placed in the lower part of the Křešice wayside chapel that is topped with a small bell tower. The plaque is made of dark grey granite and the inscription on it is in silver and is regularly renewed. Above the memorial plaque is a niche with a Gothic arch, in which a statue of the Virgin Mary stands behind the glass. The chapel is surrounded by an iron fence.
PAMÁTCE
27 OBĚTÍ NACISTICKÉHO TERORU, ZAVRAŽDĚNÝCH
V KŘEŠICÍCH ZA PŘEVOZU Z KONCENTRAČNÍCH TÁBORŮ
DNE 1. KVĚTNA 1945 A KU VÝSTRAZE BUDOUCÍM,
ABY BRÁNILI SVOBODU, ZA KTEROU TYTO ZEMŘELY.
The memorial plaque in Křešice commemorates the victims of the death transport of the Jewish prisoners that was sent from the Flossenbürg concentration camp, passing through Litoměřice and several other stops (Kralupy nad Vltavou, Roztoky u Prahy, Olbramovice, and Velešín). In Olbramovice, the train has stopped on 1 May 1945, and one section of the train was detached in a bend on the track to Sedlčany, near Křešice. The situation on the train had become unbearable, and with the permission of the SS guards, some of the prisoners were allowed to go to Křešice, where they could beg for food from the local residents and wash themselves in the local pond. According to eyewitnesses, the SS commander Friedrich Wilhelm Graun was passing through the village at that time and reprimanded the Wehrmacht guards for allowing this. Some time later, he returned with a vehicle carrying a unit of around 20 Waffen-SS soldiers, who formed a combed through Křešice and immediately shot any prisoner they saw. The dead bodies were gathered and loaded onto a lorry in the yard of the house No. 35. The bodies of the 24 murdered prisoners were taken to the forest Baba, located about 6 km away, between Manělovice and Libohošť, where they were buried. (See the database entry Grave of World War II victims, Libohošť.) The memorial plaque to the victims of the mass murder in Křešice was placed on the bell tower shortly after the war. SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Wilhelm Graun and his wife Margarete Graun, who was also said to have participated in the murders, were prosecuted in the late 1960s and early 1970s in connection with these events, but the trial was halted due to a lack of evidence.
Archive of the Security Forces of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, sig. 325-164-2.
Archive of the Security Forces of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, sig. 325-16-4.
National Archive, coll. Czechoslovak Government Commission for the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes, Historical record of Friedrich Graun.
Stanislav Staněk, Evakuace území mezi Vltavou a Sázavou za okupace, in: Sborník vlastivědných prací z Podblanicka, Benešov 1973, pp. 179–203.
Stanislav Kokoška, Cvičiště zbraní SS Bohmen 1942–1945, in: Sborník vlastivědných prací z Podblanicka, Benešov 1986, pp. 271–294.
Jaroslava Hoffmannová, Poválečná obnova území bývalého cvičiště zbraní SS Benešov, in: Sborník vlastivědných prací z Podblanicka, Benešov 1987, pp. 261–281.
Monika Sedláková, Pobočka koncentračního tábora Flossenbürg ve vystěhovaných Vrchotových Janovicích v letech 1944–1945, in: Sborník vlastivědných prací z Podblanicka, Benešov 2007, pp. 311–328.
Pavla Plachá, Osvobozený transport, Paměť a dějiny, 2018, No. 1, pp. 70–83.
Death transport from Litoměřice to Velešín, Czech-German travelling exhibition of the Military Historical Institute in Prague and KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg, opening 2017.
Personal correspondence with Marcela Čedíková, October 2024.
Zuzana Duchková