Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

adio what was happening. Then we were getting information about other stuff, from everywhere
around. In 1949 a group, Hostýnské Hory 10 started and many or our friends were put
in prison. In total it was more then 700 people, for example one of our friends, his name was
Doležal, my cousin’s husband. My cousin was ill, her mother was ill, they had two kids, a horse,
and a shed full of cattle. I went to help them with daddy and they kept arresting someone all
the time.
Did you know the reason why they were arrested?
Of course it was dissatisfaction. The Hostýnské Hory group started in 1949 and some people
were arrested and then released again for a lack of proof. Finally they were all arrested again
and in 1952 there was a hearing where six people were executed as a warning. We started in
the same year with an anti-state group. I wasn’t very sympathetic to the Communist party because
of the way they treated us after the war. You could either join the Communist party or
move to the border area. I couldn’t imagine that I would be sitting and waiting with my arms
crossed.
How did your anti-state activities start?
Through Mrs. Románková we were introduced to Josef Mach. In our group we agreed that
Mach would be hidden by the Kovář family and by the Žídek family. Both of these families saw
family members get arrested as they were members of the Hostýnské Hory group in 1949. Yet,
their sons also decided to stand up against Communists. Mach wanted to leave for abroad,
saying he would leave a radio to communicate with. My boyfriend Karel, escaped from the
army with a sub-machine gun and he also started to hide himself. Also, Alena Svobodová was
hiding with them as well. That lasted for quite a long time and later they didn’t really hide
anymore. People in Rajnochovice were meeting with them and wondering who they were.
They all wanted to escape abroad, but they were all waiting for the most opportune time.
Mach wanted to make the group bigger and take other people from the surrounding villages.
So he kept hiding in Rajnochovice, but the secret police started to follow him. I also had a feeling
that something was happening and that I was being spied on. Once I was walking to the
dentist and a car stopped and wanted to give me a ride. I knew I was being followed by it, so
I refused the ride. I needed to give some messages to people in hiding and I didn’t want to
give them away.
How long were you hiding them?
It started in 1952, when we began with our activity until March 8, 1954, that means two years
then.
What did your anti-state activity involve? Were you arrested for just hiding people or did
you try to spread your involvement into other things?
Except for hiding these three people we were also getting guns and sending messages
through the radio. Once we even heard these messages from Radio Free Europe. We were
working this way so that the Communists would be a little afraid and people would know what
they were doing. I finally got eighteen years and other sentences were twenty and twenty-five
years. We were sentenced with people we really didn’t know, because Josef Mach organized
10 A rebellious group named Hostýnké Hory (after Hostýnské mountains) was established at night from June 26th to 27th
1948. The first commander of the group was the most experienced man, Josef Čuba. This group existed until the end of
1949, in the area of Bystřice and Vsetín (East of the Czech Republic). Many of its members were active in partisan antinazi
groups, only in Rajnochovice were 15 people imprisioned.
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