Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

to get. She was supposed to give a signal that the air was clear, but when they came to the
certain place and she gave him the signal, Mach already saw that the ambulance was already
full of secret police. So he shot himself finally.
Did you ever meet Alena in prison?
Yes, we were together in Pardubice, but we weren’t in the same cell. Yet, in Pardubice it was
all right, the worst was Uherské Hradiště 11 – that was a famine. From Hostýnské Hory we knew
that Grebeníček 12 was in power there. In the morning we got a little piece of bread and were
told that’s also for supper. For supper they gave us a little piece of Olomoucký Cheese. Before
the evening came I always ate everything. Conditions in the prison were horrible. While sleeping
we had to have our hands on the blanket, but when you fell asleep you put them underneath.
You could easily fall asleep on a dirty straw mattress, under dirty blankets, and on a dirty
pillow. When one came exhausted from questioning, one would fall asleep really quickly.
Where did they take you after your arrest?
They took me to Bystřice, but that wasn’t a real prison anymore. That was some kind of
storage. After a couple of hours I heard that they brought someone else in next door. So
I knocked the morse code on the wall and it was Ilonka Romanová from our group. Her mom
was arrested three days later. In Bystřice we stayed only until the evening, then they took us
to Uherské Hradiště where examinations went on until the morning. The interrogations lasted
about a month.
What did the interrogations look like? How did the investigators treat you?
They didn’t beat us at that time anymore. I was really surprised about that because in 1952
they were beating the men from the group, Hostýnské Hory, very badly. Yet, the behavior of
the guards was very mean, we always got a handkerchief to blindfold us across the eyes so
I didn’t see anything. I was walking slowly because there were steps, but the guards didn’t
really care and they dragged us from one side of the corridor to the other. We promised each
other we would not say anything and I was telling myself that I could not break that. Then
I realized that there was a lot out already. They got my accomplices to speak and they had
a great deal of information on me and noted that I had never admitted to anything. Finally
I got eighteen years. From March 8 to August 14 I was confined to a solitary cell. I had a little
spider there and I was looking after it. It was there with me for the whole time. There was just
a small bench, bed, and two steps so that one could do their business. There was a horribly dirty
blanket that stunk. They never let me sleep. They starved me and interrogated me during the
evening and at night.
What did you go through in your solitary cell?
I divided my day this way. First I prayed, then I sang, and said some poetry. Sometimes I put
a letter together for my mom, which I was then saying aloud while I was walking around in my
cell. In the interrogation cell I didn’t get one letter. On August 14 I had a hearing, it was strung
out over several days, but I didn’t have a hearing with my dad, because he was sentenced in
another court. In 1960 there was amnesty, but I wasn’t released because in our process there
were guns included. They let me out on February 20, 1963.
11 Uherské Hradiště – a town in Southern Moravia.
12 Alois Grebeníček – from the end of forties till the beginning of the fifties he was one of the investigators people feared
the most. He worked for the Secret police in Uherské Hradiště prison.
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