Václav Dobiáš

“I was arrested in less than one year, on August 10, 1940. I was in the Pankrác prison. At first they interrogated me brutally. I can tell you that there was an interesting difference between the Gestapo and the court administration – yes, my ass got some bloody beating, and so on. I don’t even want to talk about it. But the thing was that the Gestapo always communicated with you on the first-name terms: ´You dimwit!´ followed by some slaps and so on. They had a Czech interpreter, and they were thus ready to handle even those who could not speak German so well. That’s how the interrogations looked like.”

“I can tell you one interesting thing that few people know about. They used formal language when they talked to you. They put me in my cell and left me alone for two or three days and then they assigned me into a group. A warden asked me formally: ´What is your profession and what were you sentenced for?´ I answered: ´Politische and Medizine Student´ And he didn’t call me by my first name, but used the polite formal language to me. And it was a warden who said this. The court guard was just so entirely different.”

“They led me down to the prison cell and brought me my civilian clothes. I dressed up and the warden came and told me: ´Come with me to the office to sign the release form. We will calculate what you have earned in the mines, and see if it is enough for a ticket to Prague. If not, we’ll give you something extra.´ What a thing! As he led me to the office, he says: ´You’re lucky, Geheime Staatspolizei in Prague has allowed your release.´ Since it was a police state, it often happened that many people completed their sentences and the Gestapo decided whether they would go home or not. This was a thing that one does not realize.”

“They sent me to work in the mines. There were about five of us political prisoners: two Germans and the rest of us were Czechs. We were going to the mines in Halle [an der] Saale. The mines were near Merseburg in that direction. Whenever we returned back from work in the evening, the guard always had to show to the boss that the magazine in his gun was still full. If he had not reported an escape and shooting, he would have not been able to hide it.”