Minefield in Kančí valley

In the fifties, the border between Czechoslovakia and the western countries resembled a war zone. The Stalinist regime wanted to prevent the escapes of its citizens to the free part of the world by hook or brook. Besides several zones of wired barricades and electrical warning devices they left to build the death zones on the borders, it was either an electric fence or a mine field. The main field was, for example, in the Kančí valley. Leopold Tuček remembered its technical rarity in November 2012: “There were not classic landmines, but mines created from the artillery shells. They were attached to the poles; the detonator was on top with a wire leading from it. And if somebody who did not know the way went there and stumbled over the wire, the grenade exploded.” According to available data nobody died in Kančí valley. Anyway, there are some lives the minefield can be blamed for. Once the herd of boars ran into the field - the boars ripped the wires and got in. That was a massacre. The wired barricade went up and the mines exploded. The barricade was destroyed almost in a hundred meters. The nearby patrol of the border guards had a narrow escape.