Auxiliary Technical Battalions (Pomocné technické prapory in Czech – PTP)

Auxiliary Technical Battalions (Pomocné technické prapory in Czech – PTP) were the units of Czechoslovak People´s Army, which worked as a tool of persecution and re-education of politically unreliable people between the years 1950 and 1954. The existence of Auxiliary Technical Battalions was in contrary to the then valid defence act that allowed using the soldiers in active service to work only under special conditions and temporary. Although the recruits considered being politically unreliable spent their military service and often more months after its end in Auxiliary Technical Battalions. The then applicable laws allowed the classification of soldiers based only on health criteria, not political. According to the classification used by the Czechoslovak army, the politically unreliable recruits were marked with “E”, regardless their health. Those men did not have an access to guns and could not have higher rank than private. The members of the Auxiliary Technical Battalions were used as a cheap power for chosen economic sectors. They worked in mines (in Ostrava region, Kladno region and Slovakia), on the constructions (airports, barracks, blocks of flats and other objects), in military forests, quarries and agriculture. According to different estimates, between forty and sixty thousands of people went through the Auxiliary Technical Battalions. In Czech they were called “pétépáci” or “černí baroni” (black barons – they had black epaulettes) and these expressions were used even after 1953 for soldiers of Technical Battalions (Technické Prapory in Czech) and military work units (Vojenské Pracovní Jednotky in Czech). On December 1, 1950, the Auxiliary Technical Battalions had the total number of 9900 men and 7780 of them had the political classification “E”, 1001 of the total number were men from religious or spiritual orders. The Auxiliary Technical Battalions, as political and punishment units, were cancelled on May 1, 1954. The “E” political classification was cancelled a year earlier in May 1, 1953. However, the placing of cadre unsuitable people placing into military technical units continued.

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