“In the cottage in the forests it was not that bad... but for the people who stayed in the city it was worse… Then the air raids on Brno began and sirens sounded an alarm, but we had our shelter in the village Soběšice, which was far away, and the bombing was usually over before we managed to run there. We had to run there, and it was terrible, but we survived… Our house in Brno was destroyed by the bombing.”
“People criticize the Russians, but those who were here were all well-behaved and good boys, eighteen or nineteen years old, and they were doing their army service. Often they were hungry, and we thus gave them some bread or things they needed… They did not stay for long in Brno. They lived in a villa next to us and they behaved well, better than our people… When they bombed out the place, we moved into the villas that had been left there by the Germans who had left.”
“We were shouting at him to hurry, because the sirens already sounded the alarm, but he was not too scared by it, because he was already used to it from Germany and Vienna. He just called back at my brother-in-law: ‘I’m coming, I’ll just change my shoes.’ My brother-in-law ran out of the house, and at that moment it exploded. A bomb hit the house. It was a U-shaped building, and they were in the basement on the other side and thus they saved themselves, and he already knew that it exploded there. They were not able to get out of the basement, because it was all covered with debris, but fortunately the basements were not completely covered because people did not know where it would explode, and so they managed to get out of the basement from the other side. My mom was four months pregnant, and she held my three and a half-year-old brother’s hand, and my grandma held the baby which was six and a half weeks old. They managed to get out from the debris and leave the basement. Nobody helped them, nobody was there, and they were then searching for him in hospitals because mom could not believe that he had stayed inside the house. She thought that he had escaped as well, but then they came across some old man who had the same name, and they thus realized that there was no hope anymore.”
My husband escaped from forced labour in Germany to be with me. Two weeks later he died in our house which was hit by a bomb, and I remained alone with the children
Věra Trechová, neé Mahovská, was born on August 20, 1923 in Brno. Her father Václav Mahovský came from a wealthy family. He learnt the butcher‘s trade and he worked as a butcher. He fought in WWI as a legionnaire and he also participated in the battle of Zborov. After his return he married Anastázie Svobodová who was a housewife, and they raised three children. Věra wanted to become a milliner, but unfortunately she was not able to learn this trade because the school was destroyed by bombing and she thus eventually trained as a shop assistant. When she was eighteen she married Leopold Urbánek, who was born on 28th September 1920, and who was a baker by trade. Six months after their wedding her husband was sent to do forced labour in an aircraft factory in Stuttgart. When the end of the war drew near, he decided to escape from the Totaleinsatz. He was successful and Leopold and his wife Věra were thus reunited in Brno. After just fourteen days of being together, they were separated again, this time forever. Věra‘s husband died in the ruins of their house during an air raid on Brno in April 1945. Věra and her mother were both pregnant at that time. They had to go to hide in a shelter which was located in Soběšice far away. Věra lived and worked in Brno after the war, but since 1948 she lived in Karlovy Vary. Věra Trechová died on October 1st, 2015.
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!
