Alois Grůz

* 1926

  • “There’s a farm in Bludov near to the church, and they weapons there. When you come at the chapel in Bludov from the direction of the spa, there’s a little villa there, and they had a weapons stored there as well, which is where we took them from. The boys we were, eager for anything. The German army was already retreating, and there was a blown bridge near Loučení, at the crossroads to Zábřeh, Klášterec, and Šumperk. We went there. I remember that the Germans could have shot us - we had weapons and we were civilians. The Germans went past us in droves, and none took any notice of us. I had about three SMGs around my neck. We trekked from Bludov to Zborov. I guess they divided it up between them then, but I don’t know about that.”

  • “Dad wanted to see me again because he knew I was at school. So he asked the guard to let him see me. The guard allowed it but watched him to make sure he wanted make a run for it. So he said goodbye to me, and then the Gestapo dragged him off to Šumperk, where he remained for some time, and then they took him to Mírov. They told the women that they could come visit him. They always went in twos or threes with a parcel of some kind. When they arrived, they pulled a joke on them and said that the commander had banned visits. One time, when he was still in the court prison in Šumperk, I came to visit him. We could’t tell each other anything, not even a whisper, and they cut it off after a set amount of time.”

  • “He came home weighing thirty-five kilos. I was afraid of him, and I didn’t come home for several days. I stayed at my grandma’s. I was afraid of him because I was stressed out. You could see his bones coming out. He also had stomach ulcers, which didn’t help either. When he was interned in Poland, he worked at a tannery, so he told me how they washed the leather in chlorinated lime to get the hairs to come off. They washed it in the solution to have just the clean leather. Dad said all his fingernails came off from it. They didn’t have any gloves. He was there for about half a year.”

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    Horní Studénky, 17.08.2017

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    duration: 02:14:34
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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“When he returned from Nazi imprisonment, my father looked so terrible that I was afraid of him.”

 Alois Grůz
Alois Grůz
photo: archiv pamětníka

Alois Grůz was born on the 21st of November, 1926 in Zborov in the northern part of the Drozdov Hills. During World War II, twelve - and later seven more - local citizens were arrested for listening to foreign broadcasts, including the witness’s father, who then spent three and a half years in Nazi prisons. The family farm was confiscated and seized by the German Settlement Company (Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft). Being the oldest son, Alois Grůz found himself responsible for bringing in the harvest at a mere 15 years of age. Until the end of the war, he was in touch with the local partisan group. He even helped ensure weapon supplies with his friends. In 1951, he married Marie Minářová and moved to Horní Studénky, where he continues to live as of 2017. He and his wife had three children - Pavel, Marie, and Ludmila.