“We lived in fear... We did not know whether we would get killed. Air raids began… We had to go to hide in the basement, sometimes even two times during one night. A small drum was hung on the first floor, and the man who lived in the apartment on the first floor was in charge of civil defence, and when an air raid warning was announced, he had to bang the drum and we would grab a bag with the most necessary things and run down to the basement and stay there until the alarm was called off.”
“I had many girlfriends. We all hanged out together a lot, we were close friends… At that time there were not many opportunities for entertainment. When we went to cinema in the evening, the streets lights were already turned off, and we thus had to use flashlights. But the flashlights had to be covered with a blue paint so that only weak light would be emitted in order to see the sidewalk at least. We could not return home too late, and we would thus rather go earlier and return earlier, because we did not know if an air raid alarm would be sounded.”
“At the corner in front of the Baťa shop –those poor people had to go there and wear the Star of David. These people were so nice, and we already knew them from school for about five years, and when they wore the Star of David, the lady would always carry her handbag in a raised hand in order to cover it; she probably felt uneasy and ashamed about it.”
Růžena Bláhová, née Mikešová, was born February 22, 1928 in Prague. When she completed her studies at Masaryk University in Brno, she went to work to the Baťa company in Zlín. On her way to Zlín she witnessed transports full of children and women who were headed to concentration camps. During the May Uprising, Růžena’s mother ordered her children to hide in the basement in order to protect them from the fighting. Růžena worked in the military administration office on Náměstí Republiky Square for one year. Since it was after the coup d’état in 1948, her superiors pressured her to become a member of the Communist Party. She therefore rather went to work in a shoe shop instead. When money started getting lost in the shop and discrepancies in accounting began occurring, Růžena decided to go to work to a factory instead. She studied to obtain a trade certificate and she started working in the State Factory for Spare Parts for Škoda Cars. Due to constant noise in the factory, Růžena began losing her hearing. Before she retired, she was offered work in a typewriter repair shop.
