Antonín Růžička

* 1936

  • "When it came to the trial, he said he felt guilty and that he regretted his actions, that he had stolen and endangered the economy. As he was sentenced and led a few steps under the gallows, he knew what to do. He was strong, young. There was some old man like me now, incapacitated. My uncle jumped on him, knocked him down, ripped him open, stuck his hand in his mouth and ripped his jaw off. I can imagine. He remembered his wife, how he loved her, how they loved each other. And that he'd never see the sun again, nature and all that. He'd already made up his mind, so he took his revenge. And very thoroughly."

  • "This was about shutting down the radio, television, telephone exchanges. That was my job. I was always living in fear, I wasn't at home. I told my mother to listen to the radio and not to worry about me. What else was I supposed to do? I was supervised, I was fed, I was given something to drink. And I was under the threat of an automatic gun, always at gunpoint, and I didn't know who was going to shoot me. It didn't matter if the ones shot me or the others shot me. I slept right at the telephone exchange by the machine, blanket under my head. I was alone. It wasn't until a worker came in from holiday that there were two of us. But for fourteen days straight..."

  • "My uncle lived with us, his name was Vítek, and as a young boy he taught me who the Gestapo were and how to behave when someone in uniform came. I wasn't allowed to say anything, I was supposed to cry, and if I went home with someone I had to bang on the door and not give away our meeting signal. We had a rendezvous signal that I always had to announce when I got home. The signal was like this: 'knocking' and that was it."

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    Rosice, 12.11.2025

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Knock six times yourself, just cry with the Gestapo

Antonín Růžička in 1954
Antonín Růžička in 1954
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Antonín Růžička was born on 25 January 1936 in Rosice near Brno into a patriotic family. The Růžička family lived together in a large house until 1938, when they had to separate because of their connection to the person under surveillance. His father Jan Růžička, together with Antonín‘s half-brother Jan Růžička, moved to nearby Ivančice. Antonín Růžička stayed with his mother Maria Růžičková in Rosice. In 1945 he experienced an air raid on a passenger train coming to Rosice. After the war, in 1946, he joined the school choir led by the patriot Josef Grohs. In 1951, he entered the Secondary Vocational School of Metalwork in Brno and trained as a radio mechanic. After school, he started working as a radiomechanic in the Brno Kovopodnik. Later he moved to the Brno Municipal Telecommunications Administration (then called the Administration of Communications), where he worked until his retirement. In August 1968 he worked at the Brno telephone exchange for a week without stopping. During the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops he was under great pressure and armed surveillance. In the 1970s he sued the Communists for his family land, which they wanted to expropriate. In 2025, Antonín Růžička was living in Rosice.