Vlasta Skřičková

* 1925

  • “Well, and because of that, they were always wandering, they always went somewhere in the evening and wandered around the neighborhood. Ours too, because shrapnel fell into the house next door, so we couldn't close the door, so every now and then someone appeared at our house too. My father was worried about me, so he built a ladder here. There was a small attic above the attic, so he always took the ladder in the evening and took me up there. I had mattresses there and he gave away the ladder, so I spent the night there, but it was pretty bad because some shrapnel fell somewhere nearby. It wasn't pleasant, and in the morning, they let me out again.”

  • "I ran like home and of course there was no public transport operating. Now, as I was walking, something was burning all around, and there were firemen. Well, there was such confusion, everyone was trying to put something out, to help. Well, the whole of Brno was simply bombed. Well, I went through the Grain Market. My grandmother lived there, they had Boromean sisters there... they had a convent there and they had one there, back then it was like the old people's home is today. There the old ladies could live in that room with their furniture and there they were. Well, my grandmother was there. I was just running through the Grain Market, and it was completely leveled to the ground, destroyed, and on fire. And when I walked by, those who didn't survive were already being taken out of the basement of the burning house. And I found my grandmother there, I recognized her clothes."

  • "It was in November, they raided Kounic's dormitories and all the students, it was at night, in the evening, late at night, and some of the boys were being locked in cars and taken somewhere to concentration camps. Now, the boys still in their pyjamas, I remember it like today, how they ran away from here, everyone wanted to save themselves somewhere, to get away."

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    online, 19.05.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 37:30
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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The boys were still in their pyjamas running

Vlasta Schochová in the graduation year of 1944
Vlasta Schochová in the graduation year of 1944
photo: archiv pamětnice

Vlasta Skřičková, née Schochová, was born on October 24, 1925 in Brno. She grew up near the Kounice dormitories, from where students were expelled in the fall of 1939 in connection with the Nazi closure of Czech universities, and the building was occupied by the Gestapo. Kounic’s dormitories became a dreaded prison, where thousands of resistance fighters were executed. Vlasta’s grandmother died during the air raid on Brno in November 1944. During the liberation of Brno by the Soviet Malinovský army, she hid for several days out of fear of rape. After the war, she experienced how Kounic’s dormitories turned into a camp for interned Germans. Due to the situation in the family, Vlasta could not study at the university, she got married and started a family.