Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

a drying house. Then we picked tomatoes and I used to eat them on the sly. The food wasn’t
great- watery soup only with a bit of hulled barley in it and bread. They brought us lunch
there. We got lunch around noon and we worked until three or four o’clock and then went
back to the great yard by handcar and there was the general line-up. The line-up was usually
around six or seven o’clock and it lasted about an hour or an hour and a half, I can’t tell you
precisely because we had no watches. We could only tell the time according to the sun. If somebody
ran away, as for example Dáša Šimková 14 did once, the line-up was longer, because it took
a long time to count us and find out if and who was missing. After the line-up we went to bed
already. We were glad that we could go to sleep. It was real slavery there! In Pankrác, it looked
like this: In the morning we had to empty the shit pots and there was a revolting smell from
them everywhere. Then we got bread and disgusting tea, it was a wish-wash really. At noon,
some of us worked, so they took them, for example we beat the carpets and other prisoners
could sit down, but couldn’t lie down. Some of them had to walk around without stopping. In
Pardubice we got breakfast in the morning, went to the garment room, and did sowing there.
I was never able to meet the norm 100 %. We got some wages for the work we did and could
treat ourselves and buy something for the money. We worked until two o’clock and then we
went for lunch, which we could take with us to the dorms. Around six o’clock there was the
evening line-up and we went to sleep.
Did you ever have any free time? What did you do then?
For example we did various kinds of handiwork. In Varnsdorf we made flowers, we begged
for pieces of fine wire off the electricians and wound them around a pin and then we took
the wire and wound some yarn around it. I have a flower like this at home. My mom secretly
smuggled it from the prison for me. It is a bit out of shape though, because when my mum
came to visit, we shook hands and I had the flower hidden in my hand. Luckily, nobody realised
it otherwise I would go into solitary confinement as a punishment. Sometimes we got lemons
in a parcel, so I made a piglet out of it. We used to cut bookmarks out of toothpaste paper
boxes, and we made different things out of bread too. That’s why I wasn’t interested in doing
board games such as “Člověče, nezlob se!” (a game “Man, don´t get mad!”) Some even did
chess. My dad, for example, had a wallet for camp money made out of toothpaste that I still
keep at home.
Was it possible to borrow books from the library?
We could borrow books, but it was only socialist books and I didn’t read them. We could borrow
a newspaper, but only the newspaper Rudé Právo 15 . I remember reading the paper once.
The thing was that after finishing our own work, we had to do another job - we had to help
builders. I used to run away to the toilets because they couldn’t go there to get us. Once he
came though and caught me reading the paper. When a jailor came to the dorms, we had to
stand up and report ourselves just as soldiers do during their military service. It was shortly before
my release then and I was thinking he could as well bugger off. He came and I was sitting
by the window and he says, “Don’t you know what you are supposed to do when an officer
comes?” I got up very slowly, “I am very sorry, officer, I did not see you as I was reading the
paper.” He continued, “Which is your bed?” He took my blankets and threw them on the floor.
14 Dagmar Šimková wrote a book about her memories of the prison called “Byly jsme tam taky” (We were there too).
15 Rudé právo – (in English “Red right”) up until 1989, a daily newspaper of the Communist Party.
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