"The house across the street from us caught fire. A second house was burning on the street leading to the forest. As the house started to burn, we ran out, my mother and two boys, down the alley, saying they were going to take us to the basement somewhere. We were already in the alley, and now the firing again. We had to go to the right, there was no cellar. And a lady said, "Come here, come here! It was a little house, just windows to the street. And as the tank drove down the alley, the pressure... We were sitting by the window and it blew out. It roared and you could hear the roof tiles falling off the roof. It was horrible!"
"The cannonade has begun. But such a one! They [the German soldiers] already saw that the Russians were there, so the tanks came to Zebetin. There was one that got hit - he was still there after the war. The houses were on fire and there was shooting. Dad was alone [at home], we had no cellar and we had to run away. When the shooting started, there was a wooden fence in the yard with the neighbor. And when the shooting started, bullets were flying and we were in the yard. Mom: 'Boys, come inside!' As a kid, I remember the bullets [flying] next to us - we were lucky! They buried themselves in the fence. Mum was pulling us, and now it started - terrible firing. We didn't know where to go."
Stanislav Obrovský was born on 15th June 1937 in Žebětín (since the 1970s a district of Brno) to Maria and Adolf Obrovský. He grew up in a small country house with his older brother Oldřich. During the war, his father was involved in anti-Nazi leafleting activities, and his father’s brother František was also involved in the resistance. Both were picked up by the Gestapo in 1943. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt in Kounice’s dormitory, his father suffered from serious health problems for life. Stanislav Obrovský recalls the lean times of the Protectorate, and especially the final battles for Žebětín in April 1945, which claimed dozens of lives. After the war, he trained as a turner, worked at Zetor and Izolačné závody Brno (IZO), where he also experienced the fall of communist totalitarianism. He never joined the Communist Party. In 2024 he lived in Brno.
