Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

went through grinder number two. That was almost clean uranium. This was one of the worst
working places because everything was being processed manually and before loading there
came about forty boxes. These were all unloaded onto a big pile and from here the material
was manually thrown onto the net and everything that was left on the net had to be picked up
and manually thrown into the grinder. The soft granulate was already moving on the conveyer
belt and everything was ground down to pieces less then five millimeters again. Before it was
done we had to do this process about seven times. Everything had to be mixed well together
so there would be a steady mix of the quality of the iron ore. So the whole process was done
seven times and this grinding produced a lot of dust. On one side there was a grinder and right
next to that, five meters away we were working and putting the materials together. There was
no ventilation and we didn’t have any respirators or masks. We didn’t have anything like that
so we left each day grey or red depending on the iron ore that was being processed. When we
were processing Příbram the tower was producing dust of course and this dust was red because
all the material from Příbram was mainly red in color. When we were processing Slavkov the
color was gray-green and that was a weird color. Finally, when the iron ore was from Jáchymov
the color was gray-blue or dark gray. We also knew that when we were processing material
from Lužnice we knew exactly which two concrete shafts were working. After this first halfyear
we knew everything perfectly about it.
Do you remember any names of the guards or people who were checking on you there?
There were mainly nicknames because we didn’t know their real names, but the commander
on “L” was Píbil, who was later a mayor in Pardubice. I, for example, found out when I was
already on “L” that I knew one guard. I was asking myself where the heck do I know this guy
from? It turned out to be Josef Kulek, one of the scouts! He used to be a member of the group
“War twins” and he joined the secret police. He started talking to us and suggested that we
could be friends and if we needed something he could work on it for us. I just told him, “Josef
just let it be and don’t even talk about that. Here is the fence and you are on one side and I’m
on the other. The fence is barbed-wire so you always have to keep your eyes on this.” Anyways,
he probably got back at me a little because right in 1951 I got solitary confinement and I don’t
know why, but during Christmas they took 47 people from “L” and put us all in solitary confinement.
I was one of the twelve who were put into confinement in “L” and the remaining
prisoners were taken to the nearest camp, camp “C” for solitary confinement. There I was from
December 20 to January 12. Why and for what I haven’t found out even up to today.
Could you describe solitary confinement in more detail?
Solitary confinement was a small wooden shed and it had two rooms, which looked like rabbit
hutches. They were about 1.3 meters wide by 2.5 meters long and 1.75 meters high. I was
1.77 meters so I always had to bend when I stood up. There they put six of us and for the night
they gave two blankets. One blanket we put underneath and we slept head legs, head legs. In
this way six of us stayed until January 12. In the morning we would get one pot of decaffeinated
coffee and one slice of bread each. It was a really small slice of bread. At noon we would
get soup, but the soup was really watered down again with a small piece of bread and the
same thing for supper. We couldn’t wash and instead of a toilet we had a small pail. We did
everything into that. This pail would be hung on the door for the night otherwise we wouldn’t
have been able to lie down. The worst thing was when the guard would rush in at night opening
the door and all the contents of the pail would splash out. That was nothing nice. It’s hard
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