Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

working in the camp mediated between us and Stěpánka and she then sent the messages
further inland. Within this group, Stěpánka was mediating mail for up to forty-seven people.
Husník and I coordinated it. We were distributing and gathering letters. The civil employees in
both camps helped with it.
How exactly did this secret postal system work?
We had to write on the thinnest kind of paper so there could be the maximum number of
papers to take at one time. Then we had to collect them all in a certain way and tell certain
people whose turn it was. There had to be some kind of order in it because we couldn’t receive
thirty letters at once. Each week there could be five to eight letters coming in. The letters were
sent to Prague and from there were distributed to Bohemia and Moravia as well. It wasn’t just
letters, through the civilians we had the opportunity to buy some food, which was scarce. Families
were also sending us normal civilian money and packages with the most necessary things,
that meant mainly clothing and shoes because these things were totally missing in prison.
How exactly did you contact civilian employees there?
Husník had the main contact in camp “L” with the storekeeper lady. I knew her just from
sight, I never even talked to her. On Nikolaj it was easier, Husník got in touch with civilian geologists
and surveyors. These people were able to freely move in the mines and we were able
to have contact with them. I knew the civilian geologist Míla Novotný who has already died.
The other one was Mirek Mikšovský. Up until today we are friends. When I was released we
kept going on holiday together to our cottage in Říčky for twenty-five years. So it’s a friendship
that has lasted until now.
When we look at your family relations or the aspects of your imprisonment, how did your
family look at it? How did they manage when they had a nineteen-year old son behind bars?
It wasn’t easy because my mom was a cleaning lady at the Regional Hall and right after I was
locked up she was fired and they didn’t want to give her a job anywhere after that. My father
was a driver at the transport company driving buses and tram buses. He was also fired a month
later. He had to go through the new recruitment process. The worst was for my siblings, two
sisters and a brother, who couldn’t go to proper schools. All three of them had to go to trade
schools. At that time my brother used to go to a normal secondary school and there was one
teacher, Mrs. Višňákova, who was terribly malicious. I know that once he had to stand on
a platform for the whole hour. She would always turn to him and say, “So this is the brother of
the national traitors and spy.”
Do you have any “souvenirs” or things from the time you were in prison? For example are
there any pieces of silver or other things that you were sending to your family?
Yes, some of it remains. Husník and I were actually making things like that. Not just for us, but
for other prisoners. From my prison mate Bohouš Šesták I have two beautiful things he carved
for me. One of them is a fully carved chess board and pieces. The figures are about 2 centimeters
high and the queen about 4 centimeters. Then I also have a triangular shaped ashtray. On
this there is a symbolic scout lily carved and finally I have a little figure of a man. The Triangle
is the sign of life, the figure of the man means us “Mukls” 14 , and the lily is the symbol of the
14 “Mukl” – someone who was in prison, the word “mukl” itself comes from the abbreviation of – “a man on death row”
(in Czech: muž určený k likvidaci). It was a label given to political prisoners imprisoned by communist or Nazi regimes that
were not supposed to be released and were supposed to die in prisons or concentration camps. Later on, this label started
to be used for all political prisoners.
122