Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

secret disdain to the guards, they avoided all possible conflicts, they were well disciplined and
always fulfilled the commands the way they were used to from the war. Out of their lines,
there were the lowest number of sneaks. Although they were in cahoots with others, they
were not friendly to the political prisoners. The third type was individually in total disharmony
and consisted of criminals. They consisted of murderers to bullies and safebreakers to people
who stole something from national property, to rapists. A wide gallery of people out of which
the majority sympathized with political prisoners, no matter what these criminals sat for. They
looked for their company and participated on their postures and things. Many times criminals
(also called “tattooed”) pretended to be political prisoners and behaved very well. The fourth
category was represented by collaborators and the fifth by Slovak Fascists. Except for the gift
to hate everything, all Czechs, democracy, all values and ideas, they were characteristic in their
ability to behave like a parasite, using everything for the own prosperity.”
The prison society could be divided into three groups – vindictive prisoners, who were sentenced
for their activity during war, many of them collaborators, informers, and helpers of
the Nazis; criminal prisoners, who always appear in every prison and political prisoners. The
democratic prison is different. During Communism political prisoners were seen as the worst
group, they were sentenced according to paragraph 231/ 1948 Sb. Among them we could find
many innocent people, who were just standing in the way to a newly growing communist
regime and people who really actively fought against Communism. Whether they printed the
leaflets and distributed them among people, or sent secret messages and reports to foreign
countries, or whether they were part of the organized anti-state groups. They had one thing
in common. They did not want to stand in the corner and watch how Communism got stronger
in Czechoslovakia and close their eyes and not see the harm and injustice they inflicted. On the
base of all this they were regarded as the most dangerous criminals because they threatened
the whole “human-democratic” regime.
People from various groups and different moral characteristics were meeting in prisons and
working camps and had to find some “modus-vivendi” to learn how to get along well together.
Let’s have a short look at how the relations among the prisoners looked like. On one
side there were those who were ready to take advantage of anything they could from prison
headquarters. They became the “olders” of camps and cells and instead of making the lives of
their prison mates easier, they just made it tougher. They had power over others plus they got
some material benefits like packages, visits, letters, or even money tickets. One such “older”
in the camp was also a vindictive prisoner Břetislav Jeníček who organized a beating group of
the camp. This group was officially allowed to beat others, mainly political prisoners of course.
Jožka Husek mentions this, “All in all, they would attack us, political prisoners, and they would
hit us, beats us, and kick until we would fall unconscious.” We could go further with names,
people who acted in similar ways was also Rudolf Fuchs in camp Concord (Svornost) or Václav
Bidžovský in camp 12 near Slavkov.
On the other hand, there were a majority of those who decided to respect each other. Alois
Macek speaks of some in his interview, “…such thieves and defaulters were quite nice people.
I would say criminal prisoners had a high respect for us and tried to behave well towards us.
We were tolerant and forbearing because we didn’t know what they were sentenced for. It
matched quite well together.” All relations must be considered individually. Of course there
were always people who felt powerful and liked to terrorize others. On the other side there
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