"Well, the ones who were evicted, they were three families and the teacher, the Zajícová woman, she had a daughter and a boy and the boy returned to the village, but their house had been demolished, so he built a new one at the end of the village, and he lives there now. And if he's got any of those fields back, or if he's doing anything on his fields, I don't know anymore."
"By and large, they wanted, that one, so that I would go with him. And my parents and my grandmother didn't know what to do, so they invited a neighbour who was a former, what do you call it, well, he knew German, so he told the soldier to leave me alone. And then later, again, a soldier chased me again, and it was my grandmother who locked me in the closet and turned off the water and said, "You must be there," like, in Russian. And he opened the closet and I, because we had low windows, so I jumped out of it and ran. There were gentlemen sitting there, like pensioners, and I was with them, so he didn't want to... Or how should I put it, he gave me a break."
"But when there was the air raid, which was on April 8th in the forty-fifth year, I got to Údolní Street, where I, like, instead of going to Špilberk to the shelter, I preferred to be where the trench for the tanks had been dug out so that they wouldn't get to Špilberk. So I was hidden there among other trenchers who were making trenches on Špilberk. And then after the air raid, all the guys, or rather all the guys who were running to the shelter on Špilberk, their lungs were so torn apart by the bombs that they were all remained dead there."
Jaroslava Kvardová was born on 28 March 1929 in Opatovice near Rajhrad. Jaroslava has one younger brother. Her parents Marie and Tomáš Minařík had a small farm in Opatovice. From 1943 Jaroslava learned to be a ladies‘ dressmaker in Brno. She experienced devastating air raids in the town. On the days of liberation in April 1945, she was hiding in the cellar, yet she did not escape harassment by Soviet soldiers. In 1947, she married and raised her children, and the family moved to Brno. She spent most of her professional life as an employee of BVV - Trade Fairs Brno. She retired in 1984.
