Domeček

Former communist investigation room · Kapucínská 99/1, 118 00 Prague-Prague 1, Czech Republic

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Prisoners’ motto: Persist!

Available in: English | Česky

Tomáš Sedláček was arrested in February 1951. In the Domeček (Little house), commander Pergl took charge of him. “Handcuffs, shackles and other instruments of torture were hanging on a wooden board. He stopped and pointed at them for me to see what I could expect.” They blindfolded Sedláček and took him to interrogator Řičica: “Talk about your criminal activities!” “I didn’t know what I was supposed to talk about, I told them that I didn’t know, which was considered as refusal to confess. They bound me in chains, they put my feet into shackles and I received my first slaps.” Thirty-three year old Sedláček was tortured by lack of sleep. In a 2 by 4 meter cell he walked from wall to wall and kept repeating to himself the motto “Persist!” He walked for nine days and nights, then he signed the interrogation protocols. He got some sleep and he withdrew the protocols. Then the entire ordeal repeated itself. They kept Sedláček there in isolation for a year.

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Tomáš Sedláček

Tomáš Sedláček was born on January 8th in 1918 in Vienna, he spent his childhood in Spa Toušeň. Studied Military Academy in Hranice in Moravia. Already in 1938 he served as a lieutenant in the Hradec Kralove garrison. In 1940 he escaped through the so called „Balkan" road to France, later he was evacuated to England where he had gone through paratrooper training. In 1944, on the order of the Czech Ministry of National Defense, he was transferred to the eastern front - to Dukla and afterwards to the rear of the enemy to assist on the side of the Slovakian national uprising. After the war he had been active as a Professor at the Military Academy in Prague. In 1951 the late Major Sedláček was detained on account of an alleged conspiracy. He was tortured in the ill-known Little House in the Kapucínská Street in Prague. For nine days and nights Tomáš Sedláček was kept from sleeping, he was forced to walk all that time in the solitary cell. He was convicted to life imprisonment; he had been jailed in the prisons of Valdice, Mírov, Leopoldov, and Bytíz. After the amnesty of 1960 he worked as a mason, later as an assisstant draftsman.

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Domeček

Available in: English | Česky

This prison, managed by the Communist Ministry of National Defense, was the seat of the so called Defense Information Service, which was the military version of the State Security Service (StB). Hundreds of prisoners, mainly soldiers of the Czechoslovak Army, were cruelly tortured here. The communists accused them of high treason and espionage. In 1955, the prison was closed down and the former sadistic commander František Pergl, nicknamed Suchá lípa (Dry Lime Tree), was convicted of torturing prisoners and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.