Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

on each mattress. The murderer did the same. She was jealous of her husband and killed him,
but the whole family used to visit her. She always got sweets and shared them with us. I was
not able to eat it because she touched it with her hands, with hands that killed a man. I pretended
that I had eaten it and liked it. We had to get on well with each other. That was a kind
of unwritten prison law. You simply had to adapt yourself. We were all in the same boat.
Did you meet nuns in Pardubice?
They were there, but they separated them from us for some time. That was the biggest mistake
they could have done. They did it on purpose because they wanted the nuns to be separated
from us. The nuns were full of discipline and humbleness, so they were thought to be
dangerous to the other prisoners. Politically prominent prisoners were isolated as well. That is
how the two sections of “Castle” and “Vatican” originated. Later those isolated prisoners were
mixed and moved back to normal cells.
Could you please tell us something about the hunger strike in Pardubice in 1955?
It was very interesting because the hunger strike spread like a Chinese whisper. There was
a new female prison officer in those days. She was not introduced to us, so we did not know
her name, but everybody called her Elsa Koch – a prison officer from the concentration camp
from the Second World War. We were on that hunger strike because of her. At the end she was
removed and that was the end of the hunger strike. We were on strike because of the brutal
treatment of the prisoners. Those of us who took part in the hunger strike were forbidden to
get letters or visits for three months.
Would you be able to remember the Hammarskjold event, when women from “Castle” sent
12 letters to the General Secretary of UN?
It was in that time women from “Castle” asked for paper and pens, because we were not
allowed to have them, and sent those letters. I don’t think that the letters were ever sent. No
visitors came after that, never mind international ones. The answer to the question about the
number of political prisoners was that there were only two. They counted in Fráňa Zemínová 6 ,
who was a National Socialist and I think the other one was Antonia Kleinerová 7 who was a National
Socialist too. We did not even exist for the chieftains.
Did you, the women who did not take part in that event of 12 letters, feel strange? Did you
actually know about that?
No, we did not know anything in that prison, because the women from “Castle” were isolated
at that time and we were not in touch with them. They even had extra walks, but later it
spread around the prison very quickly.
What did the visits and correspondence with your relatives mean to you?
In the course of time I would say, even though it might sound as self-praise, that we were all
very brave. We simply lied. We were not allowed to talk about many things, so when we met
our visitors we usually took delight in their civilian clothes and voice because we could not
shake their hands. The bravery of our visitors was very important too. My brave grandmother
or mother used to visit me a lot. I must say that none of them ever cried. You could not say
6 Fráňa Zemínová was a Czech politician. In 1918–1939 she was a member of parliament, representing the National Socialistic
Party. In fall 1949, being 68 years old, she was arrested and sentenced for 20 years in a constructed trial with Milada
Horáková. She was released in 1960.
7 Antonie Kleinerová joined the Czechoslovakian National Socialistic Party after WW II. With this party she was then
elected into the Constitutive National Assembly. In 1949 she was sentenced in a trial with Milada Horáková for a life term.
She was pardoned in 1960.
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