Zdeněk Menšík

* 1929

  • "From mother and father I found out, that Mr. Ohnheiser was in our cellar. It was after the front, I don't know anymore, what day it was. It was a different cellar than the one, in which we hid before. We were on the right side, but on the second side there was also another cellar. There were iron doors there and the militiamen locked him up there and went there to him. Before there used to be a gendarmerie station there, but after the war it was dissolved and the militia moved in. Then it belonged to the SNB [National Security Corps]. I don't know exactly anymore, how it was. But I remember how three militamen went around us with rifles in that cellar."

  • "When it fell, it made such a bang, that we thought, that as they were shelling the castle, that it might all fall down. In front of the entrance to the castle on the left side stood a pear tree. When we then climbed out, we saw, that it was totally destroyed, and then we saw the tower's copula. They had to shoot it down from the side from Skotnice, because it fell on the left side. The copula lay there. We heard, that something was happening, that something was falling down. It was a very big impact."

  • "I remember, that it was an ordinary day and I was at the shop in Stará Ves. Back then, when they bombarded there, Novobilský was the manager and had two shopkeepers. I was his third apprentice. And I will add, that ages ago, during the First Republic, but also during the Protectorate, flour was weighed. It was weighed and sold There were the flour silos for rye flour, wheat flour, and so on. We had a big flour silo. I do not know, what day it was, when they were flying [Americans] and let go of their bombs. It fell in Stará Ves. I was at the shop with a shopkeeper, the neighbour Dana. When the booming started, then the glass windows began to shake. It was at the top end of Star Ves. Today my son lives near there. And they started throwing the bombs. The tremors were so big, that I jumped with Dana into the flour silo and covered ourselves. We did not know, if the glass would begin to fall, or what would happen."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ostrava, 08.04.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 03:04:06
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We hid in the cellar at the castle, while the Russians were shooting at it

Zdeněk Menšík in the year 2019
Zdeněk Menšík in the year 2019
zdroj: E.D.

Zdeněk Menšík was born on the 12th of September 1929 in Stará Ves nad Ondřejnicí near Ostrava. His father was a villager who worked in industry. He worked in a mine in Ostrava and with his wife also farmed in Stará Ves. His family lived in one of the rented out apartments in the local castle. In the years 1939 to 1945 the municipality belonged to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. During the German occupation Zdeněk started to apprentice as a shop assistant. He lived through the bombardment of the village in August of 1944, during which five people died. He waited out the battles between the German and Soviet troops in the castle cellar. He is a witness of the circumstances of the death of the village miller and mazor Hermann Ohnheiser in June 1945 - members of the revolutionary guard locked him in a cellar after the liberation, where died under uncertain circumstances. Zdeněk Menšík worked in the shops Budoucnost [Future] and Jednota [Unity]. From the end of the fifties he worked as a crane operator in the Vítkovice ironworks in Ostrava. In the year 2019 he lived in Stará Ves nad Ondřejnicí.