"I always had problems with my bronchus in Olomouc. I went to the doctor and he told me: 'You won't succeed here, the groundwater is high here and your bronchus are bad. You know what, can you go somewhere else?' I say to him: 'Doctor, I could go to Ostrava.' And he: 'Go there! There is flying dust, otherwise there is a perfect atmosphere.' So, the flying dust that is still here today was not considered dangerous."
"The Slovaks, Hlinka Guard, expelled my father. We had a car, so we drove. My brother was still very small and he slept in the duvets in the back. I sat next to mom in the front. I remember that in Turzovka the Hlinka Guard wanted to confiscate our rings, wedding rings. Daddy said he wouldn't give the rings. He went to Žilina and brought a confirmation that he can transport the rings from Slovakia, because it is a personal matter."
"The worst was when someone was run over. It could have been a railway employee or a random passenger who got off the train where he shouldn't have when it stopped at a signal, for example. It happened in the Mariánské Hory. He wanted to cross to the other side because he needed to go there and was run over by a train. Those were terrible experiences. They always called me as a witness. And it came to pass that blood flowed from the whole body at once. When a train runs over you, it first causes a shock and everything is blocked. As if nothing is happening. They take him in an ambulance, they still think that he will survive, then no one thinks anything anymore, because he is already bloodless. Everything will leak out. I didn't like such experiences, but they happen, unfortunately. The track is dangerous. It seems to you that you will still cross, but it goes faster than you think."
Milan Růžička was born on September 21, 1932 in Poprad, Czechoslovakia. His father Richard Růžička was an officer of the Czechoslovak army and served with the 7th mountain battalion in Poprad. Between 1936 and 1938 he also supervised the construction of border fortresses in Orlické Hory. The family commuted with him between Slovakia and Moravia. After the proclamation of the Slovak State in March 1939, he was transferred to Olomouc. After the German occupiers abolished the Czechoslovak army, his father joined the protectorate government army. He served in Josefov in Bohemia. Milan Růžička lived through the entire war there. He remembers the arrival of the Red Army in May 1945. After the war, he became an enthusiastic scout. He graduated in 1950 in Olomouc. Between 1950 and 1955 he studied civil engineering in transport construction in Brno. He got married and had two daughters. He worked as a chief engineer and then a deputy chief of Railway maintenance section in Ostrava. Due to his disagreement with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia in August 1968, his membership in the Communist Party was terminated. In 2022 he lived in Ostrava.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
