Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

were people who worshiped moral statements and would never go so low as to serve the
regime. Finally all of them knew there was just one enemy, the communist regime, in prison
represented by guards.
Starving strikes and protests
The life in prison was basically very monotonous and each day had its rhythm and routine –
starting with wake-up and ending with bedtime and going to bed finally. Sometimes this monotonous
life was disturbed a little, especially during protests, hunger strikes, and refusing to
start working. There were not many cases that were big and had many people involved, but if
they happened they were spontaneous and never really organized. Anyways, one thing they
had in common-the majority of prisoners joined in without a previous agreement.
One famous example was the hunger strike of 1954, which took place in the women’s prison
in Pardubice. From May 4-7, approximately sixty voluntarily protested and went on a hunger
strike. They were all from the department called “Castle.” They called a commission from the
Ministry of Internal Affairs and they investigated the whole situation. The gain for the protestors
was the possibility to get basic hygienic things and regular canteen hours.
Sixteen months later in September 1955 there was another hunger strike, which was bigger
in it’s range. The estimated number of prisoners who participated vary. Some estimations say
there were about 520 women others are more conservative with 105 women who participated
on the hunger strike. Hana Truncová describes the start of the strike this way, “When the
hunger strike broke out it went by as a “Chinese Whisper” and at that time there was a new
guard in Pardubice. No one told us her name so we immediately gave her the nickname of
Elsa Koch, who was originally a guard of a concentration camp during WWII.” The majority
of women I talked to said the hunger strike started as a protest against the bullying from
guards and especially the one they called Elsa Koch. There are often other reasons mentioned
such as bad food and bad living conditions. Some people say that the exact reason for the
hunger strike was putting Dagmar Tůmová into solitary confinement. The hunger strike lasted
for a week and some women starved even longer. Julie Hrušková describes, “Afterwards all
women stopped starving, but I decided to continue. There were three of us in one cell and
it had lasted for seven days and the guards made the decision that they would start feeding
us. The first was Božka Tomášková who found out that the strike was over and she quit. Then
there was Vendula Švecová who tried to fight, but finally they fed her anyways. I was the last.
They were trying to hold me, but I told them, “Look that’s under my dignity to fight here with
you. You have an order to feed me, so go ahead.” So they put a tube in me and gave me broth,
but when they were taking the pipe out afterwards I vomited the food on the guard named
Ruzyňák who was always very meticulous about his appearance. They took me back to my cell,
in total we were on the hunger strike for fourteen days and we were knocking morse codes.
Vendula was already writing me that she didn’t feel well. They told us that the next day we
would be taken to Pardubice to be fed through the nose and not the mouth. I was anxious
about it, because I thought I would tell the doctors everything that was going on. Vendula kept
writing me that she didn’t feel fine so I told her to start eating that I was fine and I would go to
the hospital alone. However, she collapsed in the evening and without me she refused to start
eating, so I had to stop starving.”
Czechoslovak Political Prisoners 21