You’ll have to die first to get out of here

Miroslav Kácha was transferred to Leopoldov in 1952. The welcome words were the following: “You’re going to kick the bucket here, you’ll have to die first to get out.” Then the bullying started: “We were in solitary cells in twos, there was no possibility of going outside in the open air, even the windows had to be closed. We had only little water, sometimes none at all. The food was poor and on top of that lessened by punishment portions whenever the warden didn’t like something,” he recalled. In Leopoldov inmates were forced to do squats quite often: “The warden would kick the door and the prisoner then had to do squats until the warden didn’t kick the door again or until the prisoner himself didn’t collapse from exhaustion.” Another unpleasant task was cleaning the zinc-plated wash basin or the floor: “We had a cloth for that and a crushed brick. The floor had to be clean enough for it to be able to eat from it. For this task they gave us a cloth and sand, often without water. When you weren’t working, they would force you from your cell and put you in correction, where you would be beaten on top of other things.” In this regard, Kácha was lucky. During his 11 years in prisons he had no disciplinary punishments. Apart from the usual tasks, the prisoners also had to build a hall where components for military automatic rifles were made. The prisoners saw this as an opportunity for sabotage: “The department of technical inspection was led by former colonel Alexander Korda. Most of the former commissioned officers, including me, worked in the inspection department. Only several components were made there. When the rifle was later assembled it wasn’t working properly. There were two former clockmakers, a locksmith, and a specialist in delicate mechanics who were all ‘smarter.’ In the end, the production was stopped and we were kicked out of the hall back to feather processing.”