Karl Koslovski

Karl Koslovski, born on 24 January 1905 (place of birth unknown), lived together with his wife and their three children in Tori parish in the southwestern part of Estonia. The Koslovskis were the second largest extended Romani family in Estonia. The 166 individuals who bore that name had arrived in Estonia from Latvia during the second half of the nineteenth century. Karl Koslovski never attended school and eked out a living as a manual labourer. On 7 February 1942, the village elder ordered the liquidation of Koslovski’s household because he had been sent to a concentration camp. The following day he was first brought to the Tori parish administration building and then to Sindi. On 9 February, he entered Pärnu prison. A few days before the arrest, Koslovski had sold his horse to a local citizen, and this had become the subject of a criminal investigation. Before 6 March 1942, the guards took him to Harku prison, along with all the other Romani prisoners at Pärnu. Karl Koslovski’s name does not appear on any of the lists of murdered Roma. Police files contain no information on his father, August (unknown–unknown), either. There is a chance that both of them survived. As regards Karl Koslovski’s wife and their three children, they probably perished, given that the survival rate among the Estonian Roma was just above ten percent.