After February 1948 a lot of friends of the Touš family, who had troubles after establishing the new regime in Czechoslovakia, asked for a big favour. They wanted Václav Touš to guard them to Germany. Though their house was not straight at the borders it was possible to go to the border un…
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, …
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…
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…
Josef Klat is walking through the former concentration camp Mauthausen. He returns here regularly as a guide. He stops in an area behind the former washhouse. It is difficult to walk here and small stones rattle beneath the visitors’ feet. It is windy. Josef Klat is gazing at the wall of the b…
Towards the end of the war, Josef Klat became entrusted with a commando. A prisoner himself, he was in charge of a commando that was responsible for distributing bread and collecting garbage from the concentration camp Mauthausen. Besides other places, Josef Klat’s commando also delivered food t…
On November 11, 1941, Josef Klat was arrested by the Vienna Gestapo and, along with other members of an illegal resistance group, taken to its headquarters, where he was cruelly tortured and excruciated. The witness recalls a remarkable encounter that saved him from immediate execution. “All of a…
Josef Klat was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp during the Second World War. He was one of the lucky who managed to get into a good commando and, thanks to that, survived the war. However, he saw many people dying and he himself lost many friends. To this day, Josef Klat struggles…
The Czech House on Brünner Straße has always served as a meeting place for Czechs living in Vienna. During the Second World War, the patriots united around the Czech House attempted to carry out various acts of sabotage. Many of these people became members of the Communist Party, but often not b…
At the end of April 1945, Miloš Dobrý and other prisoners came to Varnsdorf. Without food and drink, and German SS men beating them, they marched from the concentration camp Schwarzheide. The prisoners suffered from hunger and while they were resting in an empty spinning mill they saw a football …
After the formation of the Iron Curtain, one of the routes leading abroad was near to Medvědí kaple, (Bear Chapel). The transfers abroad were only at night when the refugees could hide themselves in the shadows of the woods or bushes and the possibility that the frontier guards see them was l…
František Weindl used cross the valley between two villages Liščí and Červené Dřevo quite often in 1948 – he was helping people across the border. Once he went with a group of adults and a baby. Though the baby had sleeping pills it woke up and started to cry during the riskiest part of the way w…
Jaroslav Staněk, member of the Scout troop no. 52 that continued to operate even during World War II. in spite of being prohibited by the Nazis, participated in the Prague Uprising in Žižkov. One of the important missions was the seizure of the agricultural settlement Pražačka, which used to be t…
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 …
As a member of a guerrilla group Zábřeh, Bořivoj Janhuba used to often go to the woods near Drozdovská Pila. He remembers that, in 1944, he participated in a gunfight with an armed group. “We were shooting at them so they could not encircle us. They had to stay in one place, and we took advan…
Josef Pánek, a distinctive attendant of the Forensic Institute in Albertov, during World War II illegally kept hens, pigs and even goats in the cellar of the Institute. He secretly carried out pig slaughters and exchanged the meat with the whole neighbourhood. Severe punishments were imposed on …
On 18th June 1942, not far from Albertov, the Nazis were besieging the church of St Cyril and Methodius where the seven parachutists from England had been hiding. After several hours of fighting the soldiers were either killed or they committed suicide. The Nazis took all the bodies to the…
The people who helped others to get across the Iron Curtain usually came from the border area and were very well familiar with it. František Wiendl who came from Klatovy was an exception to this rule. In the spring of 1949, his father František Wiendl senior was held prisoner for his a…
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 …
During the war, Jindřich Tesař, his father, and his brother were connected to the resistance movement. Beside others they helped people who were hiding from the Nazi regime. Tesař remembers how his father helped hide Jiří Pelikán in the village Kořenec. Pelikán was a member of a communist resista…
In August 1949, priest Josef Zlámal was arrested for reading from the Shepherd’s Letters and taken to remand prison in Liberec. In December of the same year, Mr. Zlámal appeared in front of a five-member court of the county court in Liberec that was chaired by a woman. The originally “milder” sen…
Czech Children Manifest was written by Petr Placák in the restaurant U Zpěváčků in spring 1988. “I wanted to proclaim something that would by the most unfamiliar and ununderstandable to the communists. So we demanded the restoration of the Czech Kingdom. But in fact it was something that was trad…
Ivan Landsmann was granted a permit for a one-year stay in Holland in the mid-1980s. For several weeks, he was trying fruitlessly to find his fellow countrymen, sleeping in parks and fields. Eventually he obtained Jaroslav Hutka’s address in Rotterdam: “I didn’t know anything about Jaroslav Hutka…
Jiří Kopřiva and several of his grammar school classmates spent the September and October of 1950 in remand prison in Chrudim, waiting for their trial. Jiří Kopřiva was only eighteen years old at that time and he shared his cell with much older inmates. The prison environment was completely unkno…
Between October 9th and 11th , 1950, there was a fabricated law-suit in Smetanův dům in Litomyšl concerning a group of twenty five people. Amongst the accused people were several students including Jiří Kopřiva, who was eighteen years old at the time. He remembers the ordeal well: "A prosecuting …
Gendarme sergeant Karel Kněz, from Vrbatův Kostelec, was a co-founder and member of Čenda, the Pardubice-based resistance group. Thanks to him, the Libuše radio station operated the entire spring of 1942. “He made sure that radio operator, Jiří Potůček, could transmit in peace. Potůček would alwa…
A partisan group called “Vpřed,” (“Forward”) ,was planned to be landed in the area of Jihlava – Telč. However, during the flight over the frontline, the pilot changed the course, and the landing eventually took place in the area of Křižánky – Svratka – Herálec on the night of 26 March 1945. Fortu…
In June 1948 in Dianaberg (now Diana, a part of Rozvadov), a member of the Border Guard shot František Dolejš, a 33-year-old photographer from the Prague district of Smíchov. Dolejš had unsuccessfully tried to emigrate and was struggling with Border Guard Šimek for his rifle when he was shot; he …
Under the auspices of J. L. Hromádka, a professor of the evangelical theological faculty, a fellowship was created which was opened to everybody regardless of their confession and focus. The fellowship was created in the building of the Jan Hus Seminary, drawing on the initiative of J. Němec, L. …
Jaroslav Kozlík, an ardent educator, was a physical training teacher at the experimental Masaryk differentiated school in Zlín in the years 1933-1945. The differentiated school was a progressive school with modern teaching methods. Jaroslav Kozlík promoted physical training courses in the ou…
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…
The interwar-period avant-garde theater director Emil František Burian spent the war years 1941-1945 in captivity, at first in Theresienstadt and later in concentration camps. By a miracle he survived the sinking of the Cap Arcona in the waters of the Baltic Sea. He returned to Prague in the …
The magazine Literary Newspaper had been published since the 1920s. In the toughest years of the communist dictatorship, it turned into a mouthpiece of the regime. However, Antonín J. Liehm experienced the 1960s in the editorial office of the newspaper, which was by then seated in the Betlémská S…
It took the Czech leftist journalist Antonín J. Liehm 14 years of preparations before he was able to start publishing the international revue "Lettre Internationale," whose seat in Paris was registered at several addresses, among others, at the Place de la République. "I took that idea with me w…
As a granddaughter of Adolf Novotný, an Evangelical priest and the founder of J. A. Comenius Camp, Marta Kellerová would stay at Běleč since early childhood. Her family built a log cabin in the middle of the camp early on and spent time there, surrounded by the activities of young Christians. As …
František Cenkl joined in June 1943 one of labour camps in Auschwitz III. (Buchenwald – Ost., block 6). As a labourer of the Prague-based company Sedlák he worked on the factory of I. G. Farben, the producer of synthetic petrol. The forced labour turned into imprisonment immediately after arri…