Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

off the previous autumn, so I couldn‘t be bothered and took them off. In the end the people
in masks were sent to solitary confinement and since I had no mask, I didn’t go into the dark
cell. People said that the chief commander of the prison really regretted not having seen our
performance. The deputy, whom we called Pepánek, came. The girls spent about two weeks in
solitary. A couple of days earlier, Jiřina Štěpničková 21 came and she was completely taken aback
with all this, especially our masks.
Did you ever receive or send a moták (secret message) 22 during your imprisonment?
Of course, I sent many of them in prison. In every prison I used to send secret messages to
somebody, mostly to men. My mom used to send me secret messages too. She would put them
into scones because they didn’t check them. They only cut big marble cakes. I used to tell people
I trusted to eat carefully because there might be a secret message inside. I always had to
wait until the message was found and only then would I hand out the scones. I also used to
hand over secret messages during visits in Pardubice. I would glue one to my palm and when
I stretched out my hand to give a handshake, I would squeeze the person’s hand. My mother
knew that I had something in there, so she took the message and pretended to cry and wipe
her tears and that’s how she put the message in her pocket. In 1958 we were allowed to sit at
a table. Before then we received visitors always behind railings. I would like to share a little
story with you. In 1956, the women from the “Castle,” 23 which was a closed department, wrote
letters to the UN Secretary Hammarskjöld. 24 In 1958 when they transported them back from
Prague, where they were serving their punishment, Zenáhlíková, Dáša Šimková, 25 and Irenka
Vlachová again wrote similar letters to Hammarskjöld and I joined in. I handed these letters
in the form of a secret message to my mother. At that time, my parents didn’t live close to the
border, but they lived in Věstonice 26 and had no way of sending the letters abroad illegally. My
mother was afraid and that’s why she sewed them into the insides of an armchair. When I came
back from prison, I had long forgotten about that and my mother didn’t mention it either. In
2006 I wanted to throw the armchair away, but had this hint and decided to cut the armchair
open. A tinfoil packet fell out and there they were, the letters from 1958!
Another thing I should mention is that I also exchanged secret messages with Merina, who
was my best friend in prison. I can’t remember anymore why, but she got a placement at
the “Castle.” She was without scruples and was very honest with everybody. The commander,
whom we nicknamed Sultán, knew about our secret messaging, but he had no idea how we
handed over the messages. I was working in the cutting room, where the pay was a bit bet-
21 Jiřina Štěpničková (1912 – 1985) – a Czechoslovak theater and film actress. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison in
a trial in 1952.
22 “moták” – a secret message usually distributed among prisoners on a small piece of paper.
23 Special prison department called the ‘Castle’ for prominent politically engaged women. For example Růžena Vacková,
a professor at Charles University, Dagmar Skálová, and Vlasta Charvátová were imprisoned there. Altogether there were
64 female prisoners. Apart from this department, there was a department established for nuns, which was called the
“Vatican,” as well as another department called “Underworld” where women with sexually transmitted diseases, prostitutes,
women with mental disorders, and recidivists were placed.
24 On the turn of the 28th and 29th June 1956, 12 prisoners from the “Castle” department wrote letters to the UN Secretary
General Dag Hammarskjöld which described reasons and means of arrest procedures, together with the conditions
in Czechoslovakian prisons, and work camps. The women were demanding their rights as political prisoners. The letters
were supplemented with translations according to the language skills of each individual author. Naturally, the letters were
never sent out and were enclosed into the personal prison files of their authors.
25 Dagmar Šimková wrote a book of her prison memories called “Byly jsme tam taky” (We Were There Too).
26 Věstonice – a village in Southern Moravia.
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