Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

do it in his place. I didn’t know what it was, but they took me out and I found out that my boss
was general Paleček, one of the biggest war heroes. He was a really good man who taught
me all the duties of prison. All of a sudden I was serving food, pouring soup, and together we
were putting food onto tin plates and putting them into the little windows where the prisoners
were taking them from us. This way I knew about everything that was happening there.
Paleček taught me various tricks, for example how to take “moták” 23 from one dungeon to
another. When we were pouring out the piss and shit, disinfecting the bucket and putting it
back into the cell, guards were usually away and we could put a piece of paper which had
a message. When soup was poured in, and if I was holding a “moták,” I blinked my eye and
I dropped it in for the one I was giving it to. Then he knew he had a message. That was something
amazing for me. I was also going to pick food from the central, so I saw the daily life in
prison. That was nice and I can tell you at that time I cheered up a little, even though I had
fourteen years with not knowing how it will go on.
How did you get to Jáchymov 24 ?
I can’t tell you exactly when it was, but it happened within a year, sometime in 1951. Suddenly
they started transporting us, probably canceling “Kremlin,” because some prisoners were
taken to Leopoldov. Others somewhere else, and some of us were taken to Jáchymov. We came
to Vykmanov by Ostrov nad Ohří river, where there was the main gathering camp and from
that one they divided us into different camps. In a short amount of time I was right next to this
camp. This camp was called “L” and also a licvidation camp. Here the iron ore 25 was broken,
split up, put into barrels, and sent to Russia. That was really a death camp. Whoever was there
for a long time had really bad health problems from the dust and radiation. Some people
didn’t even stay there for a month and some people stayed two or three months, some a half
year, and some had health problems for the rest of their lives, because of blood decay, muscle
decay, muscle or bone decay, and so on. That was the worst camp. I was there for a short time,
maybe a week or two weeks and I didn’t get to the crushing department. I was doing just some
helping work, around. Then another transport came and they took me up to Jáchymov and
there I went through many different camps. One of the worst one was called Nikolaj, up above
Jáchymov. There were German “vindictive” prisoners 26 who were sentenced in 1945. There was
always a commander and a main camp guard. Together they organized something like a little
trip either at night or during the day. They went into the blocks. They chased everyone out
where people had to stand sometimes in the frost and in their cells they made a huge mess. If
we had food in the lockers, they stepped on it and threw it out. That was just a nightmare.
Which camps were you kept at?
If I remember well, the first camp was Nikolaj, then I went to XII, from there to Prokop, from
there to Ležnice, from Ležnice back to X and then back to XII. I returned there because they
thought I might be a candidate to run away. Once I worked with a group that later tried to es-
23 “moták” – a secret message usually distributed among prisoners on a small piece of paper.
24 Jáchymov is a spa town close to Karlovy Vary, near the German border. Working camps for prisoners were often established
near these mines and political prisoners tend to call them “concentration” camps. Historians rather prefer working
camps – concentration camp is a term connected with Nazism. Concentration camps existed in Southern Africa already in
the early 20th century. Great Britain built them there during the second Boer War. In Czechoslovakia there were “vindictive”
prisoners and later also political and criminal prisoners. Prisoners were used as cheap labor.
25 The narrator means ore that contains uranium.
26 Vindictive prisoners – prisoners sentenced on a basis of “vindictive decrees” for cooperation and collaboration with
Nazi Germany. A state prisoner was also called a political prisoner, then there was a category of criminal prisoners.
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