"At four o'clock in the morning, a neighbour came in and said: 'The Russians are here!' My son was eleven years old at the time, and we got up at four o'clock and heard the rumbling of the trucks driving down what is now Tomáš Baťa Avenue, then Stalin Avenue. In the morning we took our eleven-year-old son, we went to ČSAD Louky, where we were both employed, and we spent that day at work, where all the time Russian cars were coming there, very badly equipped, they had buckets on the back of those cars. They were driving from Vizovice towards Otrokovice and I don't know whether it was the same day or the next day, when we were at work, the drivers were writing on the Stalinka [Stalin Avenue – trans.]: 'Ivan, go home, Natasha is waiting for you' and writing names and various slogans on the asphalt surface of the road. So, these are my experiences from those early days. The following days there were painted buses with slogans, and even painted trolleybuses. The slogans were also on shop windows, on various notice boards, so it was a big surprise for everybody, because everywhere, at school, at work, and according to the photographs, every meeting was not held without the slogan Soviet Union our model. Everywhere there was Marx, Engels, Stalin, everywhere it was written: 'With the Soviet Union forever'. It was an absolutely integral part of it, everywhere was the emblem of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the hammer and sickle, so it accompanied you from 1945 onwards. Well, as far as 1968 was concerned, it was disappointing, that's an understatement, to say disappointing. That was... I don't know what the right word would be, but maybe I'll stick with disappointment. It was not only a disappointment for those who were not communists and who didn't praise the USSR and didn't see it as a model, it was a huge disappointment actually for all communists, because they felt it was a huge stab in the back from the USSR."
"The day before yesterday I was at the eye clinic of Dr Kuběna, who has photographs of Zlín from 1935 on display in his office and always has a photograph of the almost current state there. I was looking at one photograph, which shows a street not far from the church, Tomáš Bata Avenue, the connection with the current Náměstí Míru. When the war ended, looking at this picture I remembered the Spojovací Street, people who were supposed to collaborate with the Germans, such as I know this quite specifically, the café owner Mr. Malota (the café was called the café in the heart of Zlín), his family, I don't remember other names, but there were dozens of these people. They went like convicts from Tomáš Baťa's Avenue to Náměstí Míru. People shouted at them, threw garbage at them, even horses walked among them. Other people were there picking up the droppings of those horses, it was just somehow mixed sensationally with the sense of smell, the perception of desperate people, convicts. People who were on the sides were shouting unflattering words at them. I know that there were many people on both sides of the road, many shouting, and the distressed people who were walking, you could say, through that double row, were the so-called collaborators. That's what came back to me when I was looking at the picture in the clinic."
"I remember that in the house next door, almost next door, one house over from us, there lived Mr Kubín who had contacts with the partisan group. I don't know exactly whether it was with them or with someone else, and I remember very well how their house was surrounded by the Gestapo and Mr Kubín was shot in his apartment. Their son, who was a few years younger, four or five years younger than me, was very young, and he ran away from the house. They searched for him and found him down by the Dřevnice River. I remember the carpet that was hanging from the balcony, from which blood was flowing, and how armed Gestapo men were around that house for a long time, and they stayed for a long time after they shot Mr. Kubín. I also remember how they took him away."
Věra Obručová, née Bosáková, was born on 13 July 1935 in Vizovice as the only child of Ludmila and Ladislav Bosák. They came from Kojetín, and in the 1930s they moved to Zlín, where her mother worked as a worker for the Bat’a company, and her father worked as a painter and grainer. As a child, Věra Obručová witnessed local war events and experienced the bombing of Zlín in 1944. After the war, her parents joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, her mother later left the party. Věra graduated from the grammar school in 1953. In the same year she joined ČSAD Gottwaldov (Czechoslovak State Automobile Transport) as a secretary to the director, later graduated from faculty of law by distance learning and was promoted to head of the employees’ department. She was also in charge of the company’s legal agenda. In 1955 she married Evžen Obruča and they raised their son Evžen together. After 1968, she lost her job after the background checks and continued to work as a clerk. She also worked in Ústřední rada odborů (the Central Council of Trade Unions) and helped to draft the Labour Code. In 1973 she moved from ČSAD to Průmyslové stavby in Gottwaldov (the Industrial Construction Company). She retired in 1991. After the revolution she started a private law practice. At the time of recording, in 2022, she lived in Zlín.
