I thought I could turn the world around
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Eduard Brda was born on 28 May 1927 in Banatski Karlovac, Serbia, into a Czech family. His father was born in Dežanovac near Daruvar and worked as a merchant. Mum was from Strážnice and helped her husband with the shop. Eduard Brda graduated from a municipal school and a gymnasium. On January 17, 1945, he joined the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and served in the 14th Strike Division in Slavko Šlander’s brigade. With his unit he participated in the fighting in Slovenia and southern Austria against Italian and German soldiers. During his time with the partisans, he was wounded in the back by a mortar shell. The end of the war found Eduard Brda in the village of Ferlach near Klagenfurt, but he continued to serve in the army. First he served briefly in the Army of Occupation in Austria and from June 1945 to 1947 he fought in Croatia against the so-called Crusaders. He was demobilised in 1947 in Zagreb and the following year left for Czechoslovakia, where his parents had already emigrated in 1946. In Czechoslovakia, he worked as a mine inspector in the Jáchymov mines and, because of his origins in Yugoslavia, had considerable difficulties with the ruling regime of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He retired in 1987. At the time of filming (2009) he lived in Mariánské Lázně.
