Drahomír Langer

* 1932

  • “The coal mine Pluto was the worst coal mine of all the mines there. Only prisoners, German coalmen and we, PTP members, were working there. In winter, when it was freezing with minus twenty-seven degrees centigrade outside, in the chambers at the bottom of the shaft the temperature was up to plus forty-five degrees. The temperature in corridors was about twenty-eight degrees. After five hours there you thus needed to get some fresh air. When you stepped out from the chamber into the corridor, it was as if somebody splashed cold water over you. Even back then in 1953 they were saying that the mine ought to be closed down because it was dangerous. But the bosses did not want that. There were firemen on every shift who had to extinguish fires in the corridors. Some of the corridors had to be walled in, but at first we had to take out all cables. But as the fire was burning in there, the water was boiling and when a drop fell onto your back, it nearly burnt your skin. Then there was the stench. On every shift they had to bring out to the surface about ten or twelve half-poisoned guys.”

  • “He was in Ilava in Slovakia. He was lucky that he already went home, because his body weight was only forty-one kilograms. When you see those films with images of emaciated people returning from concentration camps, that was how my father was when he came home. What was bad was that he did not have insurance. Fortunately a doctor we knew started taking care of him. He was recovering for half a year before he was able to go to work. He did not receive anything and we had to provide food for him and pay for the doctor and medicines. He was in a bad psychical condition. The doctor said that he was lucky, because had he been there for a month or two longer, he would not have survived.”

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    Bělkovice, Lašťany, 11.01.2018

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    duration: 02:16:05
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We need to break their resistance

Drahomír Langer in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions
Drahomír Langer in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions
photo: archiv pamětníka

Drahomír Langer was born on November 2, 1932 at the family homestead in Lašťany. His parents refused to join the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD) during the collectivization process. The authorities therefore set very high delivery quotas of agricultural products for them, and when this measure had no effect, they sent their sons to the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). Drahomír Langer spent twenty-seven months in the PTP, working, among other, in the coal mine Pluto in Litvínov. Both brothers returned home in 1953, but their father was arrested three years later. Since he had failed to meet the required delivery quotas, he was charged with sabotage and the prosecutor proposed six years of imprisonment and confiscation of all property. Other members of the family were to be evicted. The People’s Court in Šternberk was in session on March 26, 1956. Thanks to the testimonies of people whom Drahomír’s father had helped during the war, he was eventually sentenced to one and a half year of imprisonment for endangering the unified agricultural plan. He returned home with poor health. Shortly after the father’s arrest, the communists succeeded in establishing a Unified Agricultural Cooperative in Lašťany. Due to fear, the Langer family joined it just like the vast majority of other farmers from the village. Drahomír subsequently worked in the local JZD farm until his retirement. His father submitted claims for rehabilitation several times, but he has not succeeded, and he has not even lived long enough to see the fall of the communist regime. In 2018, Drahomír Langer was still living in his native house in Lašťany.