"It was as the doctor determined. When we came to Zbrojovka [Arms factory - transl.], we went to the factory doctor, and he divided us into several objects. To the machines or to lighter work. There were these bunkers in Zbrojovka. There were big mounds of dirt piled up, and there was a door leading into them, and that's probably where they tested or made firearms. I got assigned to a workshop where they made lighters for ship's guns. It was fiddly work. You worked with tweezers, metal balls and diaphragms. It all had to be assembled into a kind of cup, so it wasn't bad."
"The end of the war was expected around May 4 or 5. It was expected that Russian troops would arrive on the main road from Rožnov. But they did it cleverly. They got here through Lhota, through the mountains above Meziříčí. When we found out that the front was close, you could already see the fire from Rožnov. The guys locked the house, and we all gathered in the basement. The house was an apartment building with about ten flats. It got hit, but nobody got hurt because we were all in the basement. Then somebody tried to break into the house. One of the fathers went in to see. There was a Russian soldier there. So the Russians were already in Meziříčí."
"We lived in Meziříčí in Máchova Street, where there is an industrial school. Across the street was a complex of tenement houses, where the military gendarmes lived in about three blocks, and in one block lived the teachers of the deaf-mute institute. When a cantor arrived, he got an apartment there. And the case of two families hit Meziříčí very hard at that time. One boy from the street, the son of one of the teachers, Ivan Kolařík, had an affair with Milada Hrušáková. They were already dating as students. He emigrated to England after 1939, but this was not known in Meziříčí. Then word got out that Ivan had returned to Wallachia as a paratrooper after completing his training. His walkie-talkie failed, he got into an unpleasant situation and there was a threat that German soldiers would catch him. He was in distress, had a vial of poison, drank it and died. By accident, the Germans found a photograph of Milada in his possession. It was stamped with the Lochman photo studio in Valašské Meziříčí. It was easy to find the Kolařík family. His family was murdered and the same happened to the Hrušák family. Only the daughter Květa, with whom I was friends, remained. The others were all murdered. I remember that at that time, German women from Meziříčí would go to their apartment. I saw that there were clotheslines stretched out and the women's clothes were hanging on them. The German women would go there with suitcases and pick out their clothes."
Dobromila Vymětalová was born on 30 July 1926 in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. Her father, Jaroslav Drápal, joined the Russian legionnaires during the First World War. After returning to Rožnov, he became a tailor and moved with his family to Valašské Meziříčí. Dobromila went to high school there. In 1942, during the Nazi occupation, she had to go to forced labour in an arms factory. She is related to the priest Vladimír Petrek, who hid the assassins of Reinhard Heydrich. When he was executed, and many of his relatives were punished, the Drápals lived in fear that the Nazis would come for them too. Dobromila knew the Hrušák family, who were murdered by the Nazis because one of their daughters was in touch with paratrooper Ivan Kolařík, who was involved in the resistance. After the end of World War II, Dobromila studied pharmacy. She and her husband worked all their lives as pharmacists in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. Because her husband went to church and they both refused to join the Communist Party, they had many difficulties during socialism, for example, they could not get decent housing.
