Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

How did it look like over there?
There were bigger cells, five of them, with ten pallets, that were called beds. As we found
out later, this department was called “Kremlin” 16 and there were about fifty prisoners, or ten
people in each cell. There were a couple of “katers,” that means a couple of iron bars. From
each of these bars, a different guard had a key. So one guard couldn’t get through it alone,
there always had to be two or three of them.
In that unit there were people who we could call “the best of the Czech nation,” not only
generals, but also politicians, priests, and officers of the Eastern and Western armies, the pilots
who made up a British squadron, the mayors of Brno, Lenora 17 and other towns, where they
were taking people across the border. Among these ten people, life was different and again
specific in certain ways. Before that you were just with one person and didn’t get to see the
others unless it was during the compulsory walks. We went to walk between the houses because
the prison in Bory was built in a shape of a star. So I could see there were others walking
there too, possibly a friend or just a familiar face. We also went to have a shower once a week
and that was it. When we got to the new department, to the “Kremlin” it had changed, there
was a different way of living. We were getting food, there was a corridor of servicemen who
were bringing us food. Breakfast in the morning, a quarter of bread and coffee, then lunch in
a tin cup.
Do you have any positive memories from this time?
At “Kremlin” I later recognized that I was in a completely different prison system. As a young
boy who didn’t have a clue what was happening in the world around, I learned a lot there. It
was my first university. The people opened my eyes. The head of general staff was telling us
about a front on the West. Pravomil Reichel who was my cellmate and who was something
like my mentor, kept telling me about Russia. How he escaped from a gulag 18 , where there
was such hunger that when someone died, others ate his body…my eyes were popping out
of my head when hearing this. Priests talked about what was done to them before the court.
I was there together with one army general, Mr. Paleček, the head of paratroopers on the
western front, who was sentenced for life imprisonment. There was a lot of generals and also
Mr. Podsedník, a mayor of Brno, who was sentenced because he was a National Socialist. Next
there was Červenka, a mayor of Lenora at Šumava, who had stories about helping and leading
people and other big shots over the borders to Germany. There was also a member of the
People’s Party, Mr. Herold, who told us what was happening after 1945 in Parliament. How
they had arguments and then went to drink together, whatever party they were from. I was
gaining knowledge there and they taught me everything – in these cells we worked too. We
couldn’t go out to work, although those who had lower sentences could leave the prison and
go to workshops. We were not allowed to go out, but they brought us various things to work
on. Whether it was flags we had to glue on wooden sticks or making snap fasteners which
were brought from Koh-i-Noor 19 . On everything there was a quota. We were also cleaning silverware,
which they stole from different chateaus and castles and brought it to us in a decrepit
16 Kremlin refers (here ironically) to The Kremlin, which is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow. The complex
serves as the official residence of the President of Russia.
17 Lenora is a small town by Prachatice, Southern Bohemia.
18 Gulag was one of the departments of the secret police in the Socialist bloc, managing a system of concentration and
working camps in SSSR. The word gulag was then used for a group of these camps and camps under this institution.
19 Koh-i-Noor Hardmuth a.s. is a Czech producer of writing and stationary products.
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