M.D. Karel Kříž

* 1926

  • “One trailer truck pulled few others behind it. Then there was a pause for a few hours and subsequently Romanian soldiers on horses entered the village. I was hidden in one tower of a transformer; those are well known even today. I was lying there and thus I had a view on the road, where new armies receded and proceeded. So I know that these Romanian soldiers soon familiarized with the local citizens. Of course, this was a friendly contact. I just know that different geese, ducks, hens and the like lost their lives because of the celebrations, although this all was divided between the locals and the conquerors.”

  • “In the fall 1944 I didn´t enter the school desks and prepare for the strict school leaving examination, as it would be otherwise expected, but I was sent to manufacture. Approximately for two months I worked in Škoda company in Brno,” (here the witness obviously made a mistake, since he worked in Zbrojovka, Brno) “and then I was transferred to the Škoda company in Adamov, near Brno. There was a big factory for ammunition manufacture, what I somehow found out later on. My eight-hour-long shifts were always about producing bullets to anti-aircraft cannons.”

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    Nitra, 04.09.2015

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The profession of doctor led him up to Soviet Union

Karel Kříž was born on July 1, 1926 in Brno. He studied at the standard grammar school, where he was reached by the Second World War. In the fall of 1944 he had to start working at the factory for ammunition manufacture, in Zbrojovka Brno. During this period he witnessed bombing of his hometown for several times. He spent the front´s crossing along with his parents in one village near Brno, where they were liberated by the Romanian Royal Army. In the fall of 1945 he began his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of the Masaryk University in Brno. After the successful graduation in 1951 he moved to work in Slovakia. In 1975 he left for five years to Soviet Union to work as a doctor at the Sojuz gas line construction.