Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

days after my trial I was already at the labor Camp “Bratrstvi” (Brotherhood), which was the
head camp. There we stayed the night and then they took us away again. Three of our group
went to camp “L” 7 where the iron ore 8 was being processed. There we got prisoner’s clothes
and the majority of people working over there were young. It wasn’t really easy work, it was
really hard, and not very good for your health.
What kind of job was it and what was your daily routine like?
It was a so-called iron ore processing plant called OTK. This work place was located in Horní
Žďár in a village called Vykmanov. Right next to that there was one old camp called “C” and
we were at the new camp, which was “L.” It was also called the liquidation labor camp, which
was quite an exacting name. When I came there in March of 1951 there was only one building
standing there, well actually two buildings, one was for accommodation and the other was for
everybody. There was a kitchen, canteen, infirmary, doctor’s office, and other equipment that
was necessary at every camp like this. What was interesting was that there were no showers. If
we didn’t ask for showering at the work place, which was right next to it, then we practically
didn’t have a place to shower at. In spite of these bad conditions we were still able to maintain
our hygiene and keep ourselves clean so that we could live through all this.
A little later in the fall of 1951 another building was erected because the whole labor camp
got bigger. They started taking all the iron-ore from all the other mines from Czechoslovakia
at that time. We had to construct this other building during the afternoons, meaning after
our morning shifts, as an unpaid job. Of course we didn’t get anything for it, rather ,it was on
the prejudice of on our free time. The number of people there increased from 150 to 300. The
material, which was taken to Russia, to the place called Čierné při Čope. That was a whole train
and it was filled up, called “Věrtuška.” When we came there in 1951 there were only two trains
leaving per month. After the production increased there were trains leaving every week. I was
leaving from there in 1953 and at that time it was one train every two or three days. One fully
loaded train contained from 25-30 wagons each weighting 25 or 30 tons each. There was a lot
of material. This was high quality pulverized material. I talk about this because there were two
kinds of material. One was strongly radioactive and it was being processed on grinders in the
place we called the “Tower of Death.” Then there was the second one, of a low quality and
this was freely transported, loaded, and enclosed in wagons that were originally intended for
cattle transport. It all was all strategic material, which always had an escort. In the front and
back part of the train there were escort guardians and there were about eight people in each
who were guarding the train through the whole country.
What exactly did you do?
Actually I went though all of the work places there excluding those where they were working
on chemical samples. I was also unloading material from the trucks because at that time the
trucks didn’t have hydraulic lifts so everything had to be loaded and unloaded manually. The
minimum we had to unload was four trucks plus I had to load up twelve trailers, which held
one ton of material each. This wasn’t any fun and I always said thank god I was so young and
I could survive all this. This was the outside work place. Then there was a second work place
where we worked on the high quality ore and this was transported in small boxes. These boxes
7 Camp “L” , sometimes called also a camp for liquidation. There was a “tower of death” where the prisoners were coming
into direct contact with radioactive uranium.
8 The narrator means ore that contains uranium.
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