Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

who was looking after President Beneš. 21 This man’s wife was English and with her there came
a guy from the British Embassy for visits. He started such a commotion and we all lost our visitors
because they canceled all of them. I saw myself how Brabec hit the lady.
For how long did you stay at camp Marianská and what did you do there?
At Mariánská I had really short stays, twice for two months I think. The thing that happened
was that the prison doctor at Bory put in my record that I was refusing his treatment and that
I was faking an inflammation of my ear. That was bullshit of course. At Mariánská there was
a German doctor, a very polite man and this guy said, “What kind of bullshit is that? How can
you pretend to have inflammation?” So they sent me to the hospital in Karlovy Vary. There
I stayed for a week. During that time they brought there my old acquaintance, Dr. Pešek who
used to be secretary to Mr. Nebesář, who was the head of the Czechoslovak National Bank.
These two guys were already in prison as well. Pešek was being interrogated and they took him
to the hospital because his heart was inflamed and he finally died there. He recognized me, but
I didn’t recognize him though because he looked so much older. He asked, “That’s Dr. Pospíšil
right?” and finally I asked, “And who are you?” He said Pešek. Thanks to that I recognized that
we really knew each other.
Could you tell me anything about the legendary escape from mine “XII”? 22
Well as for the escape from number “XII” that happened right on the second day I got there.
I was in block number 1 and there was one priest with me. This priest was supposed to go on the
shift with the same group that was planning to escape, but the group changed it so someone
else could go with them. Then in the middle of the night we were taken outside and forced to
stand in a circle, bodies of the dead boys were lying on the ground and the commander was
kicking them and jumping around. They took out two who were caught alive. We could see they
were really badly beaten. They were supposed to walk around and point out those of us who
knew about the escape. These two were not really sane at that moment. Anyways they walked
around and took two boys from our group. Later in the nineties, I got deeper into this case as
a member of the UDV. 23 I found out that the whole thing happened completely differently and
that the planned escape was known about beforehand. The guard who was helping with the escape
was in prison before and they had a trial with him previously. They called this guy Frenchie,
because he was an ex-patriot from France. So the guards knew about the escape in advance.
Did Karel Kukal know about all this when he wrote his book about the escape 24 ?
He didn’t and neither did Štich. That was interesting because Štich had been beaten so badly
that he stopped speaking. When he was in hospital a policeman was trying to find out whether
he was pretending by burning his toes with a cigarette. He started speaking much later and
he is still alive. He doesn’t know about anything that happened there since he has a complete
memory gap.
21 Edvard Beneš – Edward Beneš was the second President after T.G. Masaryk from 1935 to 1938. He was also a President
in exile in 1940–1945 and the President of Czechoslovakia after the War (1945–1948). Together with T.G. Masaryk and
M. R. Štefánik, he took part in the resistance movement during WW I and he is one of the founders of Czechoslovakia.
22 Escape which happened at night from October 14th to 15th. Eleven prisoners escaped from the shaft no. 14 in camp XII
from the Jáchymov uranium mines. The group was not successful though and on the next day the majority of the escaped
prisoners were caught and shot. Out of eleven were left only Karel Kukal and Zdeněk Štich. The rest were either killed or
sentenced for the life term. The memories on this escape are described by Karel Kukal in his book “Ten Crosses.”
23 ÚDV – Counsil for Crimes of Communism, Documentation, and Investigation. (established in the early 1990s after the
fall of Communism)
24 KUKAL, Karel: Deset křížů. (Ten crosses). 2. Vydání, upravené a rozšířené. Rychnov nad Kněžnou: Ježek, 2003. 127 s.
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