Věra Zárubová

* 1926

  • “There was Františka Kreuzmannová and Elna Ganzová in my class, and when the border region was annexed, that is, when the Jews came under attack and were persecuted, suddenly one day they just didn’t come to school and no one told us why. In short, it was as if they had never been part of our class. That was the [school] year of 1938-1939. When we chanced upon our classmates in the street, Františka spoke to me only one single time ever - she said: ‘You’re not allowed to associate with me at all, you don’t know me, and we won’t greet each other, we don’t know each other.’ From then on, if we happened to meet, they would cross over to the other side of the street and circumvent us. We met them several more times, but we never spoke another word together any more; they wore the yellow star.”

  • “The whole class was assigned to forced labour in the arms industry, in a German firm that produced aircraft components. The work was in three shifts, mornings from six to two, afternoons from two to ten [p.m.], nights from ten to six. They would count our components towards the end of the shift. We had them displayed on our table, to show how many we’d made. What we did is that we quietly moved the parts from table to table, so we fulfilled the quota, while in actual fact we didn’t produce even half of what the plan required. The boys used to take an accordion with them, and past eight o’clock there was dancing and merriment on the shop floor. But that was only right before the end of the war, when the German foremen knew that the war was lost, and they behaved very nicely to us. They tried to build up an alibi, that they had always been very kind to us.”

  • “The times in 1944, before and after, were cruel for those who had no support out in the country and suffered from a lack of food. We had contacts in the country, and so my parents used to go get flour, mainly. Mum would visit her brother in Moravský Krumlov. But that was already part of the Sudetes back then, and so instead of Moravský Krumlov we’d go to Ivančice and then make the nigh three-hour walk to Dobřínsko. My parents carried really heavy backpacks those three hours, and then we walked back to Ivančice. They often had inspections in the train and at the train station, but we always managed to get the supplies through without arrest or pursuit. My parents didn’t just procure food for our family, it was for friends and relations as well.”

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    Karviná, 13.08.2013

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    duration: 01:40:07
    media recorded in project Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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The hardest school year was 1944–1945, when the whole class was assigned to forced labour

Věra Zárubová, née Boudná, was born on 22 November 1926 in Brno, into the family of the engine master Josef Boudný. She had a sister, Marie, three years her elder; her mother, Božena Boudná, was a housewife. Věra mainly remembers the wartime period, which she experienced as a child with her family in Horní Hešpice, which is now a part of Brno. She attended a Czech-German elementary school; in 1938 she began studying at a girls’ grammar school in Brno, but the school building was taken by the Nazis and lessons were moved to the afternoon hours and took place in the building of a primary school instead. In 1942 she switched to a girls’ vocational school in Brno, which was closed in the 1944-1945 school year - the pupils were assigned to forced labour in a factory producing aircraft components. She witnessed the frequent bombings of Brno, she was also witness to a deep strike that hit a tram car and killed all the passengers. Towards the end of the war the family’s house was occupied by the staff of a Soviet combat unit, and crowds of deported Germans were herded by their house. The witness taught at a primary school for most of her working life.