Josef Černohorský

“My case began in... I think they waited for me to turn eighteen. Which I did in 1953. And the currency reform was a month after, on the 1st of June. I was not involved in anything at that time. I had been at work in the Skoda factory, and normally I would come home from work. But, since I lived close to the Republic Square in Pilsen, things that were happening there would get in my way, like the Pilsen revolt in June 1953. I went there, but only around five p. m. And what we saw... It was almost over, it had already finished. Soldiers arrived there and when the national anthem was played, they stood up and also stood at attention. And they had not done anything. Therefore, they called in the People’s Militia men from Prague, and the border guards from the state border also arrived there, and they then took care of it. And what happened was that they began closing in on the crowd, and the soldiers were advancing and whoever remained in the midst of their circle, was arrested. And we normally returned home and everything seemed OK, but the following day I was summoned while I was at work, and it all began. The militia men were there, they gave me a thrashing right away, and they were saying: ´We’ll show you, even if you had all the presidents on your side, we will beat you.´ And they started pushing me. Then they stopped. I told them: ´I already know this trick from the TV,´ or actually not the TV, but from the movies, there was no television yet. They stopped beating me, and they brought me to the central office, and as soon as they learnt that I was a Černohorský, they arrested me and took me to the prison in Pilsen Bory and they locked me up there. There were more of us. Thus you can see that they had it all planned, that they planned to put me in the prison.”

Interviewer: “Mr. Černohorský, I would like to ask about your father, he was arrested in 1848, or was it in 1950?”– “1950.” Interviewer: “And for how long was he imprisoned?” – “For ten years. Well, it was not full ten years, but around that time.” Interviewer: “And this was on the grounds of espionage? Or what accusation they came up with against him?” – “He was charged of espionage, the officers were allegedly guilty of it. And my father was a lieutenant colonel. They made up this trial, there was also this general, he was a major then, his name was Sedláček, and another, I forgot the names, but it doesn’t matter (Tyr, Nový – ed.´s note). There were four of them and one more officer. One, Kučera, was sentenced to death and he was executed. And the others received very long sentences. It was all their scheming, they had it all made up.”

“They brought us to the camp Barbora near Jáchymov and right the second day after arrival we went to work down in the mine. Without any instructions how to do it, we were lowered down into the mine. I was mining on the fourth stage, it was about 400 metres under the ground. And I was working as a trammer. A trammer was a person who was hauling the mine cars, the cars had been lowered underground, and the trammer had to haul them from the mineshaft to the place where the mining was in progress, it could be even two kilometres far from the shaft. And when the cars were full, they were hauled on that track again back to the shaft. I spent a year like that. This is what life looked like: The food was divided into four rounds: first, second, third, and fourth. I was in the third round, which was for those of us who were running back and forth from the mineshaft. Our group with get three or four dumplings with...well, that was it, I don't know how else to describe what we were fed."

Interviewer: “And may I ask you, since now we have the anniversary of 1989, how you spent that year, how you experienced the revolution, what you thought about it, if you went to some meetings...?” – “In the beginning we thought it would end up like in 1968. Because in 1968 the events looked good at fist, but then it all took a turn for the worse few months after. We thought this would happen again, and therefore we did not really get involved in it. But several days later the events began to pick up speed and then some people did join. And in Prague there were the demonstrations, and the movement progressed. And we took over, and then we did go into it, too.” – “And here in Pilsen, did you also go anywhere?” – “I was here, we went to the demonstrations here in the market square. But then it was all clear.”