Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

ter and we were also allowed to receive parcels once every six weeks or two months. Once,
at Christmas, I got a parcel and the commander brought it to me. Sultán was the commander
then. He came to the “Castle” the following day and saw that Merina had the sweets from my
parcel spread on her bed cover. Sultán told her, “Jandová, I am not going to punish neither you
nor Hrušková, but tell me how did you manage to get that here?” He was constantly trying
to figure out how I was sneaking the things there. Well, what I did was I went to the toilet at
night and crawled through the railings there. Merina and I had an agreement about the time
I go through and she was waiting for a signal and cast down a thread with her bundle of secret
messages, or I tied my bundle onto the thread and she pulled it up to the second floor where
the “Castle” was.
In prison, did you know about women who decided to cooperate and give information
about other prisoners?
One never knew who could be cajoled into cooperation. They used promises with some
people and threats to take away children and put them into foster homes. It was obvious that
every mother would do anything to save her family. They never tried to persuade me because
they knew that I had had a big chance with the Russians, who had tried to talk me into cooperation,
but I had refused. I remember one woman who signed up to cooperate. That was during
the time of Huňáček in 1958 and there was a search raid and they found my English textbook.
I studied English the day before, pulled out a box with a double bottom and I had my English
hidden there. One of the inmates asked me, “Mosquito, how did you come off?” I replied, “All
right (in English).” and I was staring into the box. I was thinking about it and recollected that
Věra was there. Her husband was imprisoned, her father was abroad and she came from a wellestablished
family in the region of Hradec. They threatened to put her child into a children’s
home. I wanted to verify it first. Once, when we were sitting in our cell alone, I started to write
a secret message for one of the male prisoners. She came to me and asked, “Mosquito, what
are you writing?” “Oh, I am just writing to the boys, to one of the ‘mukls’.” It was a trap I set
for her. In a couple of days, I was called in for questioning, “You are having correspondence
with the male prisoners!” and he started to recite the first line of my message. So I told him,
“How can you know that? Have you found it? That’s interesting!” I didn’t send the message
instead I burnt it, but I was playing stupid. “Did you find him? Did you punish him?” “Of course
he got a punishment and you will get one too.” “What for? You know, I never sent any message
to anybody. I just wanted proof and you will see the consequences in a little while.” The
following day I wrote a letter to the Ministry saying that they make people spy and threaten
to put prisoners’ children into foster homes. All in all, it was a complaint to the Ministry about
the conditions. I said that they bossed us around, they put us into the “Dump” for nothing,
gave us food only once in two days, that it was freezing there, and we had to sleep on the cement
floor etc. I gave it to Škrhola and asked him to hand it over to the commander and said
that I was going to start a hunger strike. They took me to the secret police office in Pardubice
where a doctor came to check on me every day. On the seventh day she told me, “If I can give
you a piece of advice, the letter has been delivered to the Ministry, they will come to carry
out an investigation, but you are risking your health with the hunger strike.” So, in the end,
I stopped my hunger strike and they put me back into the very same cell. I learnt that the commander
had come to the cell to do the counting in the evening and he said, “Věra, Hrušková is
spreading the news that you are an informer.” She went red. I didn’t tell anybody, but he told
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