Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

ing at us to sign a socialist commitment 13 , promising they would send us home earlier. When
he was done with his speech, Bohuška and I put our hands up and said, “Mr. Commander, we
can’t sign it. We are not provided with all the human rights from court. Our signature has no
weight.” And there we broke it down.
Were the criminal prisoners more susceptible to reeducation or to signing various work commitments?
Some of them were, of course. I think that some woman who had kids at home were more
liable to this. One of my lady friends, who I have been friends with up till nowadays, and I still
reproach and blame her for it, signed the cooperation agreement. She simply wanted to get
home because both of her parents were sick and her son in the army got a very serious infection
of jaundice. She knew she couldn’t help them out while in jail. Up till today she has had
troubles with that though, because nobody ever asks her why, why did she sign.
How did you get through visits of your friends and relatives and how long did they last?
The visits were a chapter in itself because it always depended on the čůzák, who was present
at the visit. It happened to me once that my father came to Litoměřice, we welcomed each
other and I asked about mother and the čůzák ordered the visit to end right there. When the
čůzák was full of spite he didn’t give you the pleasure to have a visitor. Once in Pardubice,
I couldn’t get nuts of candies that were in a parcel, and so they took it out and stole it. It always
depended on their moods, how well they slept. We were dependent on all of that. We always
looked forward to having a visit, but when they left, we were so sad… you knew you had
another long time ahead, before you saw them again. Sometimes I said to myself that people
who visited had it worse. In front of the gates the visitor had to beg and plead because the
gaurds were also harassing them. Visitors were worried whether the parcel would be delivered
and how long the visit would take and so on.
How often did you have visits?
According to the prison order, it was possible once a month, but if you did something bad,
they could stop or shorten it. When I was on the command, visits were more relaxed, sometimes
a parcel could be handed over. At Pankrác the parcel was properly checked. Well, when
you think about it deeply, when they were giving you a parcel at the beginning of prison, they
had to take it away from their own mouths because there was still a ticket system. 14 So we
didn’t really care for the parcels much.
In which prison did you experience the worst hunger?
I was starving the most in Bartolomějská police prison, because there they had tin pots and
when they gave you black slop in the morning, it smelled like the previous day’s goulash, and
when at noon something different, it smelled like the black slop again, which they called noble
coffee. At Pankrác I got back to normal again. At weekends, we were getting an egg for lunch
and bread for supper but they didn’t fuss about us. Anyways, when we were going to work, for
example to the printing works, then we were getting one bratwurst and a bun. But nowhere
else did we get anything better.
13 Within socialist commitments people obliged themselves for example to work extra hours or also on Sundays and national
holidays. They then got various privileges, e.g. to write more letters home, to get more parcels. It was also promised
they would be released earlier.
14 Ticket system was annulled in Czechoslovakia in 1953, during a monetary reform.
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