Stanislav Bodlák

“No grub. When we came there the first day, we didn’t get anything. Not until the next day in the morning, we got black chicory coffee, a slice of bread. At noon it was turnip, soup. As yellow as chicken soup, seeing how it was brewed from the beet. In it we had four or five beet noodles, one tiny potato, a piece of bread. The same in the evening. Watery food. I got dropsy from it, water on the knee. And I didn’t even do what the other blokes did when they didn’t have enough - they added in cold water to have more of it in their stomach.”

“Go wash. You pulled at the shower, rust. A squat toilet. Dirt, stench. You opened the door, and before you knew it you were full of fleas. Really dreadful, fleas everywhere, dirt. The women had it the worst. If you caught twenty fleas a day, that was great. And loads of bugs. There was nothing to wash oneself with. When we wanted water, we had to take this kind of cart. There were no horses, so we hitched ourselves on to it and pulled it to the Lužnice [River] to get water for washing. When we wanted to lie down, we first had to take out our head rests and mats, sweep it up there, burn the contents of the mats and stuff them with straw. But we weren’t there for long. Until 5 May. Some two or three weeks.”