"Mr. Šikula and the people who worked in the power plant did a heroic job. First, they built those tunnels, covered them with concrete, and then Mr. Šikula found out that they were to make anti-tank mines, so they then worked on that. He was afraid that the Germans would actually blow the dam up. So he decided to report it. He went out in front of the power station and saw his friend Ladislav Dolníček coming from the other side and calling: 'Franto, there are Russians here, what should I do?' And Šikula calls back: 'Laďa, go and tell them that the Germans want to blow everything up, tell them everything.’ Dolníček ran back, but he didn’t come back for ages, so Šikula decided to report it himself. But he didn't know where and how. He told himself that he would just follow the path that Dolníček had taken. He went through the tunnel, climbed out on the other side and got a blow from either a machine gun or an assault rifle. He was shot in the back, so he was left lying in the bushes. Suddenly, Mr. Dolníček came running back with fifteen Russians."
"Then we got dressed, went to Žďas, which was already full of people. We didn't know what to do. Well, then it got more serious. So I said: 'Dude, we have to get dressed and go to Brno! What can we do here?' So we locked the workshops, they dropped us off in Řečkovice and then we walked to Brno, joining crowds of people who were already on their way. I saw the first Russian on the Street of the 9th of May near the Rovnost editorial office. There he stood in a gatehouse with a rifle. I thought: 'Jesus Christ!' We proceeded to the station, where there were an awful lot of people. There were Praga V3S multi-purpose trucks there. The Russians had chosen Czech drivers, because the Russians were seriously disorientated – the signs had been reversed, the streets renamed and the Russians did not know where they were. So they chose Czech soldiers as drivers and all these people surrounded them and did not want to let them go. And so we started to push t the side a Praga V3S truck and some Russian officer yelled out, pulled out a machine gun and fired a shot, and that shot went into the Padowetz building. Then I realized what was actually happening. So we laid down on the ground and I said: 'It's all over now.'"
"My father worked at the Muzejka restaurant at the time and told me: don’t tell anyone about this. Downstairs, where the wine bar was, there was also a room next to it, in which the radio transmitter was hidden. My colleague Ladislav Buček had also gone there before me, so he also knew about those transmitters. One was in Dornych, one was in Muzejka and the third was I don't know where. It was there for three days and then they took the transmitter away. Because the Russians were driving about looking for suspicious activities. If they had found out it was there, I don't know what would have happened. They would have shot us all."
Lubomír Strážnický was born on November 12, 1945 in Brno. His father worked as a head waiter in the legendary Muzejka restaurant. After the death of his mother, Lubomír was put in a children‘s home in Střílky at the age of eleven, where he lived for three years under a strict regime. He did an apprenticeship to become an electrician in Brno, but never finished school. He changed professions several times in his life – he worked as a fitter, a breeder of exotic animals at the zoo in Dvůr Králové, a school caretaker in Jaroměř, and finally he returned to his native Brno, where he worked as a boiler operator and later as a maintenance worker. After the 1989 revolution, he founded his own company, where he worked until 2012, when he retired. All his life he spent his free time by the Brno Reservoir, where his parents had a holiday cottage. As an adult, he began to collect information about the Reservoir’s history and became an expert on it. In recent years, he has been trying to correct the story of how František Šikula prevented the Brno Reservoir dam from being blown up at the end of the Second World War, and to inform the public of the important role played by Ladislav Dolníček in this event. It was Ladislav who brought the Soviet soldiers to the mined dam and thus saved not only the dam, but also the hurt František Šikula. In 2021, Lubomír Strážnický lived in Brno.
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!
