When Štěpán Vašíček arrived at the Na Cejlu Prison (in Brno), the warder did not like the cross that he wore on his neck. The warder tore it off and broke two of his ribs. Vašíček continued to provoke the warder by his joviality. He like to sing, which he did frequently. One time he was placed in…
Milena Hypšová worked as a civilian employee in the uranium labour camp, checking gangue for radioactivity. She met her life-long love among the political prisoners. At first she thought he was from State Security – he had an electric mine lamp like they did – and she behaved to him accordingly, …
Since the communist regime didn’t allow Anton Srholec to fulfill his desire for priesthood, in 1951 he attempted to flee abroad with a group of students and priests. There he hoped to reach his goal. However, one fateful April night his plans were thwarted because of the swollen Morava River. On …
Since the communist regime didn’t allow Anton Srholec to fulfill his desire for priesthood, in 1951 he attempted to flee abroad, where he hoped to reach his goal. However, one fateful April night his plans were thwarted because of the swollen Morava River. Secret trial with the whole group took p…
In May 1949, a group of six young people tried to steal the planes from the airport in Choceň bacause they wanted to flee to the West Germany. After the gunfight the members of SNB (national police) who were guarding the airport were disarmed and tied. Within minutes, the refugees were sitting …
In 1949 Zdeněk Mikš was, after an attempt to kidnap a plane, condemned for treason and robbery to thirty years of imprisonment and afterwards he went through several prisons and labour camps. It happened probably in 1960, and the StB (State Security) tried to force Mikš to cooperate. “The screw t…
František Šedivý spent a part of his 14-year prison sentence in the communist camp Bytíz. “The conditions in the camp were not so harsh compared to those in the Jáchymov area, and we even had greater freedom of movement. And although the food ratios were small, we were not starving. In May 1955 a…
Zdeněk Mikš was sentenced for thirty years of prison for treason and theft after trying to steal an airplane in Choceň in 1949. He stayed in several prisons and labour camps including the forced labour camp in Ilava, where he worked as an assistant to the prison photographer: "We found out that i…
Vojtěch Klečka was a successful agent of CIC till June 1949 when he and his Belgian accomplice were arrested at the main station in Prague. “We were coming to Prague; we arrived at the fifth platform. It was Friday, June 17 and right in that moment I saw him – a policeman, a civilian, a polic…
Vratislav Herold began his career in StB, (State Security in Czechoslovakia), in mining town Jáchymov in 1953. To his displeasure he joined the wardens in the labour camp called Bratrství, (Brotherhood). In that time the camps and prisoners were on the increase, and each StB newcomer had p…
Bratrství was the second Jáchymov camp, after camp Vykmanov, where Jan Haluza had ended up. There he experienced a week of cruel interrogations without anything to eat or drink. The interrogators never succeeded in making him confess to espionage, but he did become infected with typhus. “When the…
After his conviction in the summer of 1949, the political prisoner Karel Vavřínek served his term in Slovak Leopold. In early 1950, he was transferred to Jáchymov, where he worked in the “Bratrství,” (Brotherhood), mine. He was assigned to the geodesy department led by a Russian engineer by the n…
When Jiří Rys Lukšíček was twenty-one years old he was sentenced to six years of imprisonment for high treason. He got to the labour camp Nikolaj and worked there in the shaft Eduard. Fifty-nine per cent of the local prisoners were condemned for political reasons: “The first thing they asked you:…
The communist regime didn’t allow Ján Brichta to become a priest. Therefore, he tried to reach his only dream behind the Czechoslovak borders. His attempt, joined by other students and priests, however, was halted by a swollen Morava River in April 1951. On the way back from the borders, almost w…
In 1954, Jiří Lukšíček, a member of the scout resistance movement, was sentenced to six years of imprisonment for treason. Along with others he served his term in the Rovnost work camp in Jáchymov. There was a much feared warden, nicknamed Černá Máry. Lukšíček shared his room with Požár: “We call…
Rovnost was the last camp, in the list of all the ones, where Jan Haluza had served his sentence. He worked in a mine there: “I had to pull the minecart, which was used to carry uranium ore, three or four kilometers up a small hill to the place of excavations. That is where the minecart was l…
Štěpán Vašíček was spent almost a year in Camp Rovnost, (Equality): “The commander at the time was Paleček, real name Albín Dvořák. I was to receive a visit for the first time in three years, my mum and godmother were supposed to come to see me. Before that happened, Paleček called out for me and…
Ivan Kieslinger spent the end of 1949 on the infirmary of the Jáchymov forced-labor camp "Rovnost," (Equality). December the 18th was J. Stalin's birthday and Ivan Kieslinger recalls that the wardens decided to remind the inmates of this important anniversary: "They conducted an extensive search …
Eduard Mine is less than a kilometer away from Nikolai Camp. The civilians and guards working there used to come for their shifts either by bus or through a small gate by the forest. That way, they did not have to walk all the way around the fence of the camp. Jiří Málek, standing by the former p…
František Zahrádka was sentenced to twenty years for high treason and espionage. In November 1951 he was found capable of work in uranium mines and though he weighed forty-five kilograms, he was transferred from the Bory prison (Pilsen), to camp Nikolaj near Jáchymov. He worked there as an as…
Zdeněk Křivka was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his activities in an anticommunist resistance group. He successively passed through seven labor camps in the Jáchymov area, including the worst one called Barbora, where he was imprisoned for two and a half years beginning in November 1952. Th…
After his arrest, Zdeněk Kovařík was taken to the prison in Hradec Králové. “I spent six months in a solitary cell. The room was two by three metres. At 5.30 a.m. the alarm went off, I had to quickly wash myself and then walk all day. When I had first arrived there, there was a nice clean red xyl…
Jarmila Bočánková was seventeen when she was sentenced to four years for high treason and espionage. She spent several months in prison in Hradec Králové. The hygienic conditions were pitiful and very uncomfortable for the girls, especially during menstruation. When Mrs Bočánková asked the female…
In 1951, Zdeněk Kovařík was sentenced to prison and sent to a uranium mine in the region of Jáchymov. First he was put in the infamous “tower of death” in camp “L” where he spent five months. “The uranium ore had to be sorted according to its quality and the best quality ore was ground into five-…
In Winter 1956 František Zahrádka was, within his twenty year punishment for treason and espionage, transferred to the labour camp Vojna in the region of Příbramsko. He worked there as a breaker in a uranium mine. After he came to the camp he immediately got a forty-day punishment of correction f…
Before his trial in 1950, Josef Vlček was placed in a solitary confinement in remand prison Ruzyně. He recalls that these were the worst moments of his life. He spent entire days, weeks and months in isolation, the only company being bare walls and his own thoughts. In the hardest moments, it w…
Vladimír Hradec was arrested, like many others who had been helping the Mašín brothers before their escape. The State Security picked him off the street on November 25th, 1953 and took him to the prison in Ruzyně. Vladimír Hradec considers himself lucky for being arrested after the deaths of Gott…
At the Institution for Teenage Girls in Lnáře, Jarmila Bočánková - who was sentenced to two years for high treason and espionage - became friendly with local girls. Most of them were condemned for political reasons: “We were young, anti-communist and political prisoners and we were incredibly pro…
Luboš Jednorožec came to the Slavkov camp in June 1951. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and was firmly determined to run away at his first opportunity. That opportunity came in September. When the prisoners were being taken to their night shift, he managed to separate himself from the o…
In November 1951, Vlastimir Maier, who was only eighteen years old at that time, was put into a prison work camp called Camp XII that was affiliated with the uranium mines in Horní Slavkov. The conditions in the camp were terrible and the prisoners often dubbed it the death camp. Two months …
After his second arrest, Vladimír Chlupáč was interned in the Horní Slavkov camp. In the autumn of 1951, eleven prisoners tried to escape from the camp. "We were standing lined-up on the camp yard and we had to watch on as they brought back the bodies of the runaway inmates on trucks. They dum…
Karel Kukal was among the eleven prisoners who decided to escape from the shaft no. 14 on 15 October 1951. The prisoners interned in camp XII. "We escaped during the Sunday night shift when there were only three guards. We agreed to pretend there was a water pump accident. We reported an urgent…
During the war, Ignác Bilík went through several Nazi prisons and after his arrest in 1951, he got to know the communist ones as well. Among the numerous communist prisons he went through was Mírov, where the following story took place.: “Once, the door of our prison cell swung open and guards wh…
Luboš Jednorožec arrived in Leopoldov with a sixteen year sentence for running away from the camp Horní Slavkov, as well as for his attempt to cross the state border. In Leopoldov they did not beat prisoners, but they tortured them in a different manner. They had to march in a squat and do pu…
Milo Komínek was a prisoners in Leopoldov. “I spent eleven years in Leopoldov, and nine years out of that was in a solitary cell. A solitary cell is meant for one prisoner only. It is possible for a person to be alone there, or in twos, threes or fives. But there can be eighteen, twenty or even f…
Antonín Husník was transferred to the Leopold prison from the Jáchymov forced-labor camp. A motley crew of inmates gathered in this prison during his term. In the prison cell, there was for instance General Janoušek, who had organized the creation of the Czechoslovakian units in the RAF during WW…
In 1956, Bohumil Robeš was imprisoned in the Leopoldov prison for anti-Communist activities. In that year, Hungary saw a major revolt against the Communist dictatorship and the Soviet occupation. The prison warders and the leadership of the prison were very nervous that the Hungarian events …
Since the communist regime didn’t allow Anton Srholec to fulfill his desire for priesthood, in 1951 he attempted to flee abroad, where he hoped to reach his goal. However, this fateful night his plans were thwarted because of the swollen Morava River. Going back from the borders, the whole group …
The communist regime didn’t allow Ján Brichta to become a priest and therefore he tried to achieve his only dream outside of the Czechoslovakian borders. His and some other students’ and priests’ attempt to do so, however, was halted by a swollen Morava River in April 1951. However, on their way …
Karel Vavřinka was nineteen years old when he was arrested and imprisoned. Along with a few friends, he had been publishing pamphlets called “The Voices of the Silenced,” which were supposed to rouse the people, make them more active and aware of the false communist propaganda. The originators of…
In the year 1948 Milo Komínek joined the resistance group Portáš-Jánošík which operated in Moravian-Silesian Beskids. At the time, one of his friends had told him that he could be useful to the group thanks to his knowledge of the mountains. “There is an important spot here where we are: the Jabl…
Milo Komínek was sentenced for anti-communist resistance activities and on October 11, he was transported to prison Bory in Pilsen. “It was a nightmare – chaps locked up in chains. There were not many small-time thieves at Bory, the majority was political prisoners. I was lucky because they put m…
Zdeněk Štich was one of the eleven political prisoners who attempted to escape from Shaft 14 of Camp XII near Horní Slavkov in the night of 14 and 15 October 1951. He does not remember being caught: the StB’s cruel practices have literally silenced him. “It probably happened in Klatovy during an …
At the age of eighteen, Stanislav Lekavý was sentenced to two years in prison by the Communist regime. In the year 1949 he was put into correction in the Bory prison in Pilsen. He recollects that he had spent three weeks there, filled with unbearable beating, suffering and fear. “During those fe…
Ignác Bilík, thanks to his vast experience, had the opportunity to compare the “quality of accommodation” of Nazi prisons and of the Communist prison in Uherské Hradiště. The comparison did not turn out favorably for the latter regime, because the Gestapo, according to his experience, did not try…
In October 1944, the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade got an order to besiege the naval fortress in Dunkirk. Among the soldiers was Antonín Špaček, who was an armaments and technical officer with the second battalion. The soldiers were disappointed that they could not participate in the …
Among the soldiers participating in the fights of the Carpathian-Dukla operation was also a Volhynian Czech, sapper Josef Holec. After a number of bloody battles the soldiers had gone through, they were all excited to cross the borders of the former Czechoslovakia. “Our reconnaissance unit c…
František Wiendl was one of the people who decided to help others to flee across the border after the coup d’état in February 1948. On one of his journeys to the border he got delayed and when he emerged from the forest above the Chudenín village, it was already light. Border guards with mach…
In May 1952, Miroslav Hampl started to work in mine Svornost in Jáchymov. He was nineteen and after a short course he became a collector. He focused on active ore and was deciding about its mining. They pointed out in advance that he will work with heavy criminals. But in the course of time he …
Ludmila Langrová was sentenced to prison as a member of a subversive terrorist group in the town of Žleby; a case concocted by the State Security investigators in 1950. Ms. Langrová spent the majority of her sentence in the RAKO factory, sometime also dubbed the “firebrick factory”. “We lived in …
In November 1952, Miroslav Hampl was arrested and transported to correctional labor camp Mariánská in the Jáchymov area. Upon his arrival, he was blindfolded and taken to the dungeons of the infamous Capuchin monastery, which was located within the premises of the camp. “The cell had four by five…
Milan Sehnal, who was sentenced to many years in prison, served part of his sentence in communist prison camp Mariánská in the Jáchymov area. In the beginning of 1951, Mr. Sehnal, along with two comrades, attempted to flee from the prison but were caught. “They put us between wires, the space was…
Mariánská prison was the third stop for Boy Scout and resistance fighter Eduard Marek on his involuntary tour of Czech prisons. At the beginning of the 1950’s, chief Vašíček was one of the most feared local commanders: “He was originally a waiter who managed to become a chief under the new regime…
Boy Scout, (10th troop in České Budějovice), guide and courier, František Zahrádka, starting in 1949, was guiding refugees across the border of Czechoslovakia. Moreover, he took part, within a resistance group called “In the name of truth,” in making and distributing anti-Communist leaflets. He c…
On November 20, 1949, František Wiendl and his friend, Prantl, helped a group of seven people flee across the border. They borrowed a car large enough for a bigger group and the two of them set out from Klatovy. The group was to be picked in the village of Beňovy. Beforehand they prepared a s…
Luboš Jednorožec got to the foot of the mountain Dyleň, two days after he managed to escape from the labour camp Horní Slavkov. He was tired from a lack of sleep, hungry and numb with cold, but filled with hope that he would soon be able to cross the border to Germany. The proximity of the bor…
Luboš Jednorožec was on the run from the labor camp in Horní Slavkov. He did not have a map and he did not know the local area. All he knew was that he had to get to Mariánské Lázně and then take the shortest route to the west, toward the borders. He was running along forest footpaths. Once, when…
In February 1948, Vladimír Hradec was attending the grammar school in Poděbrady. “On the morning following the coup, we could see militiamen on our way to school. They must have counted on something like that, with their guns ready. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them,” he recalled. Hrade…
Vladimír Hradec was arrested in 1953 for helping the Mašín brothers acquire weapons before their legendary escape to West Germany. After fifteen months of interrogations he was presented with a “script” for the trial which he was to learn by heart. His fellow prisoner, who had some experience, wa…
When the Mašín brothers decided to leave Czechoslovakia in October 1953, they visited Vladimír Hradec who had been helping them acquire weapons on a long term basis: “Radek, (Ctirad Mašín: editor’s note), came to see me on Saturday the third, and stated that they would run away that night. Milan …
In 1954, Milan Gabčan was transferred from the prisoner camp Svatopluk to Ležnice. The local commander was Ondrej Zaremba, who had very poor methods of re-educating the prisoners. He marked Milan Gabčan as a runaway because he hid himself in Slovakia before the trial. Together with other pr…
In 1951 Josef Lešinger was sentenced to fourteen months of imprisonment for attempting to cross the border. He served part of his sentence in a prison camp called Ležnice. He remembers the horrific conditions that the political prisoners lived in there. They did not have enough food and were c…
During his imprisonment in work camp, Eliáš Rudolf Duda, being a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, refused to work on Saturdays, because his church considers Saturdays to be holy days. “During the morning roll-call they were reading out the names of those who were supposed to work. The …
In 1949, Kamil Růžička, a scout member, was sentenced to prison "for distributing leaflets" to serve three years in Jáchymov uranium lager, where he was given the label E 0951. He would never forget it: "In Eliáš I., that was located nine hundred meters above the see level, the winter was harsh, …
The State Security had come to get Antonín Husník at the end of May 1950, he was interrogated at the infamous Little House. During the interrogation itself, beating was apparently quite rare, but if someone refused to cooperate then they would be taken over by interrogator Pergl and sergeant m…
While in the Vykmanov I. camp, Antonín Husník set up cannonball connection with the free world by a happy accident. It started with the breakdown of a coal conveyor belt, which the prisoner team used for loading coal onto railway cars at the Ostrov train station. Husník had to repair the co…
Jiří Stránský found himself in prison in 1953 because of the Freedom Train case, with which he had no connection. He was falsely accused by his former boss, who was in danger of the death penalty, and who made up all sorts of stories about his various co-workers just to save himself. Despite the …
Antonín Husník was arrested in 1941 because of his attempt to run away with his friends from the Protectorate and join the Czechoslovak foreign troops. First he was interrogated in Brno, then he got to the prison in Strážnice: “We were interrogated by the Gestapo there. Naturally, they slapped us…
Karel Kukal along with ten other prisoners tried to escape from Shaft 14 of Camp XII. on 15 October 1951. He was shot in the knee during the attempt. “There was no gun left for me. I knew that if the guards were to get me alive, things would be real bleak for me. So I made an arrangement with s…
Leo Žídek, a student of the Nový Jičín Grammar School, was the only one in the class who did not join the Czechoslovak Union of Youth. As a result, he was notified just before his graduation exam that he would not be admitted to take the exam even though he was one of the best students. Cons…
In March 1948, Miloslav Komínek and several of his friends decided to cross the border and flee from Communist Czechoslovakia. As a trained pilot, he was supposed to shoot two movies in the USA in which he was supposed to do the acrobatic flying, but the regime did not allow him to leave the …
Miloslav Komínek was arrested on April 4, 1948, when attempting to flee across the border to Germany, and taken to the office of the Border Guard in Broumov. The fact that Miloslav Komínek was shot in the belly and therefore severely wounded was of no concern to the guards. “There, in the off…
Luboš Jednorožec, a scout and a political prisoner, escaped the communist prison camp, Horní Slavkov, and sometime near the end of September 1951 headed for the Sedlčany Region near Prague where his cousin Jiří Baloun owned a farm. Luboš used to visit his cousin often and knew the region well. He…
In 1949, Jaroslav Kopáček was arrested for supporting the anti-communist resistance movement and taken for interrogation to the State Security offices in Strakonice. The arrest was very fast and therefore, there was no time to get rid of the compromising evidence. Luckily, his interrogation got i…
Vladimír Ponikelský was arrested in the year 1949 and was charged in a fabricated lawsuit with omitting to report a criminal act. He had to share his interrogation cell in Pankrác with a man who was either completely mad or managed to successfully feign madness; until today he is not sure of the …
In the year 1944, Vladimír Ponikelský was assigned to the artillery regiment after his recruitment at the first Czechoslovak Army Corps in Rovno in Volhynia. He took part in the fighting in Machnówka. The army was in poor condition and ill-equipped, he recalled: “In Machnówka we were stationed ne…
In the early days of May 1945, Ivan Kieslinger along with other scouts got involved in the Prague uprising. One of his tasks was to maintain the connection between the main post office in Jindřišská Street, which was a key communication center of Prague, and an outpost in the Palacká Street. Tou…
František Wiendl got actively involved in the May uprising in 1945. With other resistance fighters, he disarmed the German garrison on the hill “Hůrka” before the arrival of the U.S. Army to Klatovy. After the liberation of Klatovy, the enthusiastic revolutionaries wanted to go to Prague and assi…
On 5 May, 1945, an anti-German uprising broke out in Klatovy. František Wiendl became involved in it and he and his friends disarmed the German garrison on the hill “Hůrka.” The Wehrmacht soldiers didn't put up a fight anymore – they let the insurgents disarm them and awaited the arrival of the A…
In 1989, Jaroslav Popelka found himself in prison in Nové Sedlo for attempting to found the Green Party. He had already been in several other prisons before, but as he remembers Nové Sedlo, where he spent three months, was the worst of them: “They had a Vertex plant there where the boys man…
At the age of 14, Bohumil Robeš became an eye witness of the liberation of Holubice by the Soviet army on April 25, 1945. He doesn’t like to recall the memories connected to the stay of the Soviet soldiers in Holubice. “Don't even ask me what it was like here under the Russians. I don't want to r…
At the time of the forced collectivization of agriculture, Bohumil Robeš lived in Holubice, a traditional rural agricultural area. He witnessed the practices of the communist officials, who robbed the traditional local peasants of their family property in the course of the collectivization. He …
In October 1953, Bohumil Robeš was imprisoned for his membership in the resistance organization SODAN and taken to the secret state police prison on Příčná Street in Brno. The prison cell was located in the basement, and Bohumil Robeš remembers how he could get a glimpse of at least a part of the…
Bohumil Robeš was placed in the prisoners’ section of the lunatic asylum in Praha Bohnice in 1966 as a mentally ill patient. However, he wasn’t mentally ill, but has continually opposed and stepped up against the oppression, the humiliation and the injustice in the Communist prisons. As a cons…
František Šedivý helped two fugitives to cross the border to Bavaria in the fall of 1948 and the spring of 1949. For security reasons, he didn’t know their names and they didn’t know his. The first crossing was an older man, probably an army officer with his wife. The second crossing was far more…
Since the communist regime didn’t allow Anton Srholec to fulfill his desire for priesthood, in 1951 he attempted to flee abroad to any country where might reach his goal. During that fateful night, the group, which included many older and exhausted priests, got to the embankment of river Morava w…
The communist regime didn’t allow Ján Brichta to become a priest, therefore, he tried to reach his only dream behind the Czechoslovak borders. Along with a group of students, as well as some older priests, on the morning of April 8, 1951, he began to march towards the nearby Austrian borders. He…
Jiří Světlík witnessed the end of World War II in a German prison in Munich. His way home to Plzeň was hampered by a post-war reality that was present throughout all of Europe – devastated railroads and bombed bridges. In a bomb-shattered Munich, nobody cared about the repatriation of Czech polit…
After the war, American soldiers deployed in West Bohemia had a very lively social life; especially local young people were keen to meet and make friends with them. Many friendships lasted for several years, during which boys and girls exchanged letters with American soldiers. In most cases the…
On 29 December 1949, Zdeněk Růžička was arrested and transported to the residence of the State Security Regional Administration in Ostrava for interrogation. Though he committed no offence, the communist investigators Krhut and Walder intended to involve him in a fabricated political trial with m…
Savings bank clerk Antonín Axamit was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison for high treason just before his wedding to Miluše Axamitová, (then Hesová). He was arrested for helping three university students cross the state border, in their attempt to flee the country. He was imprisoned in …
Štěpán Vašíček, a former electro technician, was arrested in 1950 and spent time in countless number of prisons throughout ten years for allegedly aiding in espionage. In the Vojna camp near Svatá Hora, Vašíček witnessed a Holy Mass. The masses were secretly served by priests of the Redemptorist …
Miloslav Šafrán was a soldier of the 3rd tank battalion of the 1st Czechoslovak armored brigade. This unit moved to Bruntál in June 1945, where the soldiers helped with the concentration of the German population, securing their property and the organization of their subsequent deportation. On Ju…
In 1944, Miloslav Šafrán was assigned to forced labor in the former town of Heydebreck in Upper Silesia, where he had to build wooden houses in a camp for the workers of the industrial chemical plants of IG Farben AG. The factory employed several thousands of employees and a large number of p…
In 1957, Juliána Lápková was summoned by the StB to an interrogation in a chateau in Ostrov. She was the daughter of a “rural rich.” Three years earlier, she had to start working as a nurse in the uranium mines of Jáchymov, where predominantly political prisoners toiled under inhumane conditi…
Juliána Lápková witnessed the persecution of her family during the era of the agricultural collectivization of the countryside. Her father, Václav Pecháček, continually refused to incorporate his native farmstead in Vřesce into the local collective farm. Therefore, the communist officials impose…
Anna Pánková always had exceptionally good school results; she even represented her school in a number of poetry-reading and other competitions. In spite of her talents, she had no perspective of studying at a grammar school or any other type of secondary school because of her family and class b…
The nineteen-year-old Karel Vavřínek was arrested in May, 1949. He was charged with the publishing and distributing of anti-communist leaflets called “Voices of the Silenced”. His arrest was precipitated by his correspondence with a friend in Slovakia. “The Voices of the Silenced were published i…
In September 1951, the political prisoners Irena Šimonová and her friend Helena escaped from prison and from a mine that produced brick clay where they were forced to work. Their plan and hope was to cross the nearby border to the West. Irena was desperate and exhausted, running away from the i…