Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

to describe it. I believe not many people would believe the stuff I’m saying and say to themselves,
“This man is making it up,” but this was really happening.
Have you ever met Josef Kulek, since your release?
Yes, I met him when I was a civilian. About a year after I came back he wanted to talk to me
and I told him, “We have nothing to talk about together.” I met him in 1978 or 1979, I don’t
know exactly. I was working for the sugar factory in České Meziříčí. I worked there as a designer
and builder. We were putting new technologies to work and all of a sudden someone
was standing above me and I told myself I know this man and it was Mr. Kulek. A year after the
secret police called me and asked what I did, how did I do it, was I behaving myself, and so on?
So he didn’t let me be until the last moment of his life.
How long did you stay at camp “L” and when were you transferred?
On “L” I stayed for two and a half years and for the last two years I was in camp Nikolaj in the
mine Eduard. This was a special rarity in camps because from camp Nikolaj on mine Eduard you
would walk through a special corridor for about half or three quarters of a kilometer on a local
public road. In the morning we got up, leaving on the morning shift, and they would turn the
lights on through out the whole corridor. They would tie us together with a steel cable – about
300 people. In the back they locked it. This was a farce and we called it a “Russian Bus” and the
worse was in winter when we walked at 4 a.m. when there would be 40 centimeters of new
snow. That was nothing to cheer about. Sometimes it also happened that someone would slip
and the others would slowly walk over. In those moments guards would start yelling, “Stop,”
and similar stories were happening there.
So this was the way you walked to mine Eduard?
Exactly, one day we would go there to be told that we would be going down and the other
day I would have to go down to the shaft and work like a normal miner even though there
were no instructions or they didn’t show us how. Then I was told I would clean the gutters. So
I cleaned the gutters where the water was running away. Then I worked as a mine carpenter –
I did carpentry on chimneys, stepladders, and so on. Then I worked with the bricklayers putting
up the chimneys. Then my friend Husník told me, “Come with me, we will work as breakers.”
That was something like the pinnacle of the mining experience. Other breakers were breaking
horizontally, but we were breaking into the ceiling. We didn’t want to get any iron ore, but
there were percents for the iron ore so we would go and steal the material where the civilians
worked. Here we would steal a small box of iron ore, we ground it, and we would sprinkle it
back on. The measurements showed that we did a good job right away. So we had some percentage,
we benefited from it, and we didn’t only break stone, but we had some iron ore. Yet,
up in the grinder they couldn’t benefit from any of this because it was wasted rock.
You told me that after two and half years you were transferred to Nikolaj from camp “L,” did
they tell you any reason why?
No, they were never giving any reasons to anybody. I know that many of my co-prisoners
switched from four to eight camps or prisons during five years of imprisonment. It depended
on how they needed to place them. In the end, meaning in the second half of the 1950’s they
were dividing us also according to professions. Because, for example in Opava they built offices
for project engineers and so some of us who studied various technical schools were taken there
and started working for the Ministry of Interior. Also, when someone would try to escape he
would be transferred somewhere else or into a normal prison.
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