Baťa in war Berlin
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.