Zdeněk Švajda

* 1934

  • "Then I saw two shot Germans, lying dead by the cemetery wall. That was hard. Local people went to bury them, and there was one from our village, a tough man. He was digging and we were looking on, and it's harsh to remember. He cut their head off, [the grave] was too small or something, just like that. They buried Russians too. Seven Russian rank and file soldiers and one officer, he had a coffin and the others had a common grave lined and covered with straw. Then our people dug them up again and they were drinking, because again, only certain people could do that; not everyone could. The bodies were already decomposing. They made four coffins only. They didn't let us near; we wanted to go in there to see but they didn't let us. Well, actually, they did let us in! The bodies were lying there, separated from the straw, they were pouring lysol on them, and they were sort of fused together."

  • "I remember it like yesterday. When we were boys, we would run around up here in the hills, and whenever we heard any firing, we ran up there to see it. In short, German soldiers came to the school and stayed there. I don't know what they were doing . They ate there and there were a lot of them. Then at eleven o'clock in the morning, they would come out of the school right here behind us and go to the shooting range about one and a half kilometres away. They went shooting. I can still see it, the way they carried those machine gun cartridges hanging around their necks. As they were walking, we would run after them. They didn't chase us away. Then they got down there and started shooting at the targets on the range like they do today, and it was a big roar and it made us boys feel good."

  • "Then this squad came here, about sixty of them drove into the yard. They started doing their thing, yelling at each other and so on. Then they left in the evening. Later on, we learned, although I cannot confirm this, that Březnice was allegedly meant to be burned down. It was that very squad that came here to burn it down, and Frank was already in Zlín. But I only got this through hearsay."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Březnice, 16.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:17:29
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

No one betrayed us during the interrogations

Zdeněk Švajda, 1949
Zdeněk Švajda, 1949
zdroj: Witness's archive

Zdeněk Švajda was born in Březnice in the Zlín Region on 18 December 1934 into the family of Jindřich, a Baťa shoemaker, and his wife Anna. One of the hotbeds of anti-Nazi resistance formed in nearby Zlín soon after the outbreak of the war. When the resistance fighters moved to the hills above Březnice during 1942, many locals joined them - both people in Březnice and the herders living in the hills helped the partisans with lodging, food, and money. Zdeněk‘s father Jindřich joined the group as well. When the group was uncovered due to Stanislav Růžička‘s betrayal, the Nazis raided the village twice, but thanks to the bravery of Březnice citizens who were arrested and interrogated harshly, Jindřich Švajda escaped the tightening noose. Thanks to the silence of those arrested, Březnice avoided the fate of Lidice and Ležáky. The Švajdas spent the liberation in the cellar, listening with fear to the firing and explosions. The Nazis set up a machine-gun nest near them. After a fierce battle, Soviet soldiers settled in the Švajdas‘ house; Zdeněk witnessed the dying of a wounded captain and the post-war funerals of killed Germans that were not free from displays of rudeness and hatred. Zdeněk got his training as a cook and machinist in the late 1940s. He spent his entire career at the ZPS plant in Gottwaldov. He worked in the machining shop and, during the summer, he cooked summer camps held at the Jelenovská resort near Valašské Klobouky, which was regularly visited by senior state officials, artists, and TV personalities. Zdeněk Švajda once roasted a pig for the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Milouš Jakeš. When the communist regime collapsed, the witness and his wife Jindřiška took part in street demonstrations in Gottwaldov. At the time of the interview, he and his wife were living in their native home in Březnice.