"I did Sokol already before the end of the first republic, because Sokol was then ended in June 1940, and I remember that already back then I was going to Sokol and at the end we had this sort of little tent camp made at the club house and that was how work ended in Sokol. And in forty-five, when it was renewed, then with great effort so that the whole clubhouse and the whole activity could be started again. Well and in a town like that it played a very important role, because I personally believe that a whole host of people, those who returned from prison, tried to get Sokol into the collective subconscious how it was before the war. And of course the exercise in its entire extent, public exercises, and it was prepared in the year 1948, which I took part in as a youth. That was the first sort of place, where against the new - well in quotes new - traditions were demonstrated hard, and when we were supposed to go around the celebratory tribune, on which Klement Gottwald was, then instead of look right everyone looked left."
"The Germans came after the whole group of Obrana národa quite intensively and in June, around the 26th of June, the Gestapo came and searched right through our entire house. Whole wardrobes were thrown out, all of the things that were in there. It happened that practically three weeks beforehand we had had at home, respectively father had at home a light machine gun, which before the coming of the Gestapo... basically the whole thing was moved somewhere else. They searched for the weapons and everything else and then arrested father. He was imprisoned in Uherské Hradiště, then in Brno, in Dresden, In Golnov near Stettin and then it ended in Berlin, in the year forty-three. And there on the 26th of January 1943 he was executed. Well, and only my mother went to visit him twice, but we could not go theree. We tried, for there to be some sort of legal path for him to be cleansed, basically for him to return home, but it was not possible. Only mother had to pay for that court advisor, who was supposed to sort it out."
"In the year thirty-nine he later [father Josef] joined Obrana národa. His father was the leader of a legionary group. The railroad group was especially strong, which then later secured the transport of fleeing people. It is said, that around two to four hundred people left the country through this railway group. We did not know this at all and the fact is, that I still cannot figure out, if on the last Christmas in the year 1939, when father said: 'Set the table quickly, I have to go to a birth,' I don't know, if it was by chance that at that time he was not also transportin someone, because besides the railway group there was also the legionary group. They secured the transport behind the second line for those fleeing across Horňácko to Velká, Kuželov, and Hrubá Vrbka, and he secured the transport of those people, who were fleeing behind the border. He made it possible for them to flee across Budapest, Belgrade, to the Far East or to France."
Zdeněk Hlobil was born on the 24th of September 1933 in Veselí nad Moravou to the family of the esteemed doctor Josef Hlobil. Since his childhood he took part in the activities of the physical education union of Sokol. In the year 1939 his father Josef took part in the activities of the resistance group Obrana národa. In June of the year 1940 the witness experienced his father being arrested by the gestapo and a house search. He was imprisoned, tortured, and in January of 1943 the Nazis executed him in Berlin. In the same year Zdeněk started attending the grammar school in Strážnice. After the war he joined the renewed Sokol in Veselí nad Moravou, studied at a medical faculty and became a doctor in the hospital in Uherské Hradiště. He became an expert on tuberculosis and other lung diseases. After going into pension he worked as a doctor in the spa city of Luhačovice. After the year 1989 he initiated the renewal of Sokol in Veselí nad Moravou, in the year 2019 he was still the president of the physical education union. In the year 2003 he accepted the Award of the City of Veselí nad Moravou for his longtime work and sacrifice in the sports field and in the Sokol movement. In the year 2017 he entered the Hall of Fame of the South-Moravian Region at the announcement of the best athletes of the region, and for the renewal of Sokol after the year 1989.
