Josef Růžička

* 1917

  • "It was still so quiet in Berlin, the war was not so fierce there. It wasn't so much felt there, normal traffic ran, cafes and such entertainment - businesses, theaters, everything. That life ran like that. We started working and started looking for an apartment, so from the beginning it was all rather unfortunate."

  • "The unfortunate year of thirty-nine has come. 1939, when the German army arrived on March 15, Hitler occupied us. During the mobilization, which was before the occupation, it happened that one gentleman left the export, the export warehouse, and the manager of the whole warehouse called me and only told me that I should join the export warehouse as such an accountant."

  • "Once it happened from the very beginning, when we were on such a walk, we came across - it was not far - such a dining room Prager Restaurant, and when we entered, it was really an older gentleman, and he had an immediate offer. We haven't had any food tickets with us yet, but we got it right at the Prager Restaurant, I remember a pretty good Czech lunch - dumplings, vegetables, pork. "

  • Full recordings
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    Zlín, 19.09.2014

    (audio)
    duration: 01:46:49
    media recorded in project Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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Baťa in war Berlin

Young Josef Růžička
Young Josef Růžička
photo: soutěž

Josef Růžička was born on February 18, 1917 in Brumov in the Zlín region. He grew up only with his mother, he never knew his father. In the 1930s, he graduated from Baťa’s boarding school in Zlín and then worked in the local shoe factories. As an employee of the Baťa Group, he was transferred to Berlin before the outbreak of World War II. He then witnessed the bombing in war-torn Berlin. After two years, he joined Baťa’s warehouse in Bohumín and joined the partisans, to whom he supplied military footwear. At the time of filming the interview (2014) Josef Růžička lived in Zlín.