Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

Where did they take you after the trial?
They took me to Znojmo where all inmates were starving and from Znojmo to Charles Square
in Prague. From there I went to Kladno 13 where I was seriously considering my escape. Ruda’s
girlfriend, who had tried to cross the border with us and had been arrested too, was there with
me. She didn’t want to leave though. I don’t know whether it was her or somebody who heard
us by chance who betrayed me, but they called me into their office and told me, “Well, well, so
you would like to escape and you are trying to talk the others into going with you.” Of course
I wanted her to testify and they called her, but she testified against me and therefore they took
me to Ruzyně 14 . There was no interrogation, nobody spoke to me about that. I was there for
about ten days, they put a note “escape” into my papers and put me in Pankrác 15 to a transport
cell and from there they transported me to Jičín. I stayed there for four months. In the meantime
they sent me to Terezín to work in a prisoners´ commando. After 2 weeks they found out
that I tried to escape and sent me back to Jičín. From Jičín they transported us to Lomnice nad
Popelkou from where a women prisoner, who was a climber, had escaped shortly before we
arrived. She had escaped through a bathroom window on the second floor and people said
she had managed to get across the border and abroad. We weaved canvas in Lomnice. We
stayed there for about four months again and then got transported to Hostinné, where they
had a spinning factory. We worked at the wet hall and swapped shifts with civilian workers.
The work was hard, but we had a good commander. He allowed us to take parcels from visitors
and we also took money on the sly. The commander went shopping in town every day together
with a vindictive prisoner 16 and she bought everything for us. From there we were transported
to Hradec Králové. That was already in 1952 when they were establishing Pardubice and they
transported me there and I stayed there until my release.
What was your arrival at Pardubice 17 like?
Prisoners were transported from Litoměřice, Česká Lípa, and Chrudim. We were taken from
Hostinné to Hradec Králové and then to Pardubice. There we noticed that something was
going on because guards treated us nicely and were telling us, “Girls, this isn’t going to be
a pleasant experience for you.” We were actually the second transport to arrive at Pardubice.
The first one was from Pankrác. We were used to a certain look of jailors’ shoulder boards
and all of a sudden we saw red shoulder boards and we knew we were guarded by the secret
police 18 . They gathered us on the prison yard where they gave us numbers. I got number 176.
We were put into one cell, it was a big hall divided into double rooms. We lived on the first
floor because there were offices on the ground floor. It was called “A” section because there
were also men in the “B” section. Then they gathered us in front of the “A” section, brought
13 Kladno – a town in Central Bohemia.
14 Ruzyně – a prison in Prague.
15 Pankrác – a prison in Prague.
16 Vindictive prisoners – prisoners sentenced on a basis of “vindictive decrees” for cooperation and collaboration with
Nazi Germany. A state prisoner was also called a political prisoner, then there was a category of criminal prisoners.
17 Pardubice – there was a prison for women. The first transport of political female prisoners arrived on March 26, 1952
and was supposed to prepare the location for coming prisoners. Mostly political prisoners with high sentences were placed
into this prison.
18 On May 1, 1951, the Ministry of Justice handed the Pardubice prison to the Home Office. From then on, the security
ceased to be provided by prison guards and was taken care of by the police. Prisoners agreed that as soon as the institution
was handed over to the Home Office, the prison conditions tightened up, violence occurred on a larger scale and
stricter disciplinary rules were introduced.
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