Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

state. We had to clean it with ammonia and a white chalk until it was nice and shiny. They even
gave us sewing machines and we had to learn how to sew cables from cloth or leather. We
worked there with leather a lot. We were making straps, making parts for textile machines,
working with hemp, and we had to bead rolls. Everything was under quota and everyone had
to fulfill the quota as the food was depending on that. So it was ten people that were already
a group who were quickly working as a team. The most beautiful thing was on Saturday afternoon,
I don’t know anymore if it was at three or five o’clock, but they locked down all the
bars and we knew that until Monday morning there would be nothing happening and no one
would be dragged through an inspection. Always on Saturday or Sunday afternoon one person
from each cell had homework to prepare a story he wanted to talk about. It was a little university
there, but big training for a man. We were still waiting for the final word from the highest
court. We were still living with high hopes that the punishment would be reduced and instead
of fourteen years we might get only a year or two. So there was hope living in each of us that
we would be released from prison.
When did it come, the result from the highest court?
It was terrible that it was autumn and we were still in these dungeons, five of us who appealed
were still sitting in the “Kremlin.” In each dungeon there was one of us, Bóža Modrý,
Kobranov, Roziňák, Konopásek, and I. We all went through that. It was close to the ice rink in
Plzeň so we heard each goal. They were playing hockey there and we were in the “Kremlin,”
sentenced to so many years. From that point of view it was horrible, to find out that it’s the
end of your sports life. I was just twenty and when I thought I would have to spend fourteen
years there I would come out at age thirty-four and I could just go and dig potatoes and not
play hockey.
When did the statement finally arrive?
That hope was still living in us when all of a sudden they announced that the appellate court
will be on December 22, 1950. So we were waiting to see what would happen. They came for
us, dressed in prison clothes, and they put us in an “anton.” 20 In front of us and behind us there
were cars with machine guns and we were still hoping at least at this court we would see our
parents and our children.
You hadn’t seen them until that time?
We hadn’t seen anyone at all, absolutely not. They took us again to that court and I remember
as though it happened earlier today. The chairman of the court was Mr. Kruk. Then they
called us in. All five of us were standing there. First, a plaintiff spoke then our lawyers were
speaking and pointing out the facts that nothing had been proven. They were insisting that
there was reasonable suspicion, but they had no proof and therefore there was nothing they
could sentence us for. Our lawyers were telling us that and we still believed it. Yet, the prosecutor
was a real bastard. He kept reading various protocols, even a statement of a woman who
was a caretaker of a house we were living in where my father had a shop, a butcher shop in
Podbaba 21 . This caretaker was taken care of by my father during the whole war and he gave
her things to help her out. This lady wrote about me because she was a secret communist confidante
that I was the last root of a Golden Prague Youth that must be cut off. I was rolling my
20 “Anton” – a closed police van for transport of prisoners.
21 Podbaba is a lokal name for neighbourhood in Dejvice.
106