Zdenka Kobzová

* 1935

  • "There is such a straight line from Šilperk to Cotkytle and there was a van and there were a driver and a soldier in front and they thought there were no more of them, so they climbed out into the meadow and started firing after the van. But a bunch of Germans in the back jumped out of the van. They shot the person, who was going to warn others about them. They shot a lot of them there. They have a monument on Cotkytel Road. They were buried in Cotkytla, in Crhov they were buried. It was the baker who went to warn them that was shot. They shot him, but the partisans could not reach him and he died. "

  • "Dad had to grow silkworms. The godfather carpenter made such small ribs. A small bag came as with poppy seeds. There were such perforated papers and leaves were placed on top. Every day we tore a full basket of leaves. Caterpillars grew out of it and they made cocoons and he had to put them in boxes and send them away. We had a lot of them in our little room. And when one of the caterpillars escaped, a butterfly flew out of it. "

  • "My mother dressed me in warm clothes and we went to the forest. The housekeeper Švédová took the cross from the church and took all the grandmothers and grandfathers from above in duvets on wheelbarrows and in chariots. We went down, as they say, under the hazel, into the forest. It was such a valley, and as they were shooting from Drozdov to Cotkytli, they were shooting us and it flew over us. We heard it all. We were there until morning and prayed the painful rosary. To this day, I will not forget how we went, everyone, prayed, and how we slept there. My mother threw a blanket into the woods and we children were lying on it. In the morning, the partisans came to inform us that nothing had happened and that we could go home, but have to stay inside. So we returned to the village and the peasants next to us, the Svedovi, let the cows, the horses run free. They opened a garden for them if it was burned down so that the cattle could escape. So the peasants had cattle in the gardens. We went to the village, but not home, but to the Svedova family to the farm, to the cellar for potatoes. We put bags in there and we were there for two days, day and night. "

  • "There was a room at the back where our windows were to three quarters filled with sawdust. The Soviets brought about five Germans there, who laid in front of the chapel, and one collected their papers, and Dad wrote them a certificate. Mom locked us in the room, but Anička and I, in order to not miss something ... we ran away. We climbed the sawdust and watched through the upper window what was happening. There was such a nice young boy and he took the papers and in the photo, I saw, there was a lady or a lady. He probably asked him what it was. I didn't hear it through the window. We just saw him step on his face, take the rifle and shoot him. We started screaming, my mother ran for us and cut us off there ... His brain was splashed all over our school."

  • Full recordings
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    Zábřeh, 18.11.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:46:30
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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    Zábřeh, 24.11.2020

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    duration: 24:55
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I carried food to two-legged foxes

Graduation photograph of Zdenka Nimmrichterová (Kobzová) from June 22, 1953
Graduation photograph of Zdenka Nimmrichterová (Kobzová) from June 22, 1953
photo: archiv pamětnice

Zdenka Kobzová was born on September 17, 1935 in Olomouc as the eldest of two children to her parents Ferdinand and Maria Nimmrichter. However, she spent her childhood and the Second World War in Crhov in the Zábřežsko region, where her father worked as a teacher in the local two-class municipal school. In this purely Czech village, during the wars incorporated into the Sudetenland, she experienced several Gestapo raids. In the school building where the family lived, German soldiers also housed Soviet prisoners for fourteen days, to whom the family secretly gave food. As a nine-year-old girl, Zdenka also brought food to the partisans. Shortly after the war, she saw the execution of a German soldier with her own eyes. After the war, she graduated from medical school and worked for forty-seven years as a nurse in a nursery. In 1958, she married Miroslav Kobza, with whom she then had two children, Soňa and Miroslav. Five years later, the family moved to Zábřeh, where Zdenka Kobzová lived in 2020.