Vlastimir Maier

“The best quality ore was processed by the tower, only priests worked there, some forty, forty-five priests. There was a dreadful amount of dust, they had one fan about half a metre big, all clogged up, and it didn’t work at all - it was switched on, but it didn’t turn what with how it was clogged up. I was scared of that place, and I admired them for going there. One of them got a nosebleed and had to leave the next day, the rest dutifully laboured on, breathing the stuff, most of them are dead now. I was scared of the place, and when I was supposed to pass through it, I took a deep breath, held it, and didn’t breathe again until I had ran over to the other side. The Crushette it was called, that’s where the best quality ore was crushed, what they called pitchblende.”

“The first day I was there, my friends told me to take a look into the drying room, where they put the mining clothes to dry. There were three corpses there, people who’d died in a collapse. So I went to have a look there, as a boy. Then I couldn’t sleep for three days, they were just piles of meat, the way the rocks had mashed them up. So then I was afraid to go mining for a long long time, but I got over that of course. I mined in No. 7, we used to go there from No. 12 via this two- to three-kilometre-long corridor, barbed wire on both sides, guards with automatics. Later on they started taking us there in Tatra 111s. They crammed us in like sardines and took us to the shaft. We were so hungry that some boys said they couldn’t bear it, and they tried to eat whatever they could. One Slovak told me he even tried eating Rudé právo [Red Law; the main Communist daily - trans.], that was the only newspaper you could buy there. They tried it - soaked it in water and ate it. I never tried that, I was sick just at the thought of it. They tried eating toothpaste. Then we found out that the camp kitchen disposed of its waste. Rotten potatoes and the such, so we would raid the rubbish bins and cut out the bits that were still edible. Back home we’d cook it on our tiny stove and eat it. I think I was there for a bit more than a year.”

“In camp number 12, hunger was terrible. We were young boys, we were starving and we did not know what else to eat. So we would go to a place in the camp, where rotten potatoes were being thrown away. Potatoes from the kitchen, where you had to go to peel potatoes, it was part of your duties. And the bad ones were being thrown away. We would collect the potatoes which were still edible, cutting out the bad parts and keeping the rest. But there were about fifty of us at that dumping place, so you did not get much for yourself. We would then heat them on the stove in the barracks. We would always get one bucket of water for the whole day, so we would heat it, and by night the stove had to be cleaned and everything put away from it. This was because of fire hazard, for the barracks were made of wood. I experienced severe hunger while there.”

“Later after the communist takeover of power we began listening to the Radio Free Europe broadcast and this somewhat inspired us. And naturally, I and my friend, with whom I founded this group, also started with some resistance activities against the communism. We were seventeen years old. We named the group Expres, it was a name taken from some book. We planned that we would carry out various actions in rapid order, hence the name Expres. We founded this group and began printing pamphlets and gathering some weapons. I had some. I got them in Ruda nad Moravou, where I was doing a part-time job for about half a year.”

“I was working with a mining jackhammer. There was a huge shaft. About the size of a half of this room. There were two mounds, in the middle there was a ladder which we used to climb up. We were supposed to blast that place in the upward direction. And there was a rock. Leaning like this, and me – what an idiot I was, I don’t know how it happened with all this experience I had – but I drilled through it and suddenly something kicked my ass. I jumped back two metres and my friend who was there with me also leaped two metres back. Darkness everywhere. Our carbide lamps went out, extinguished by the blast. For a while we did not say a word, we were just touching each other. Now I was shouting at him: ´Are you alive? Are you OK?´ And after five minutes I heard. ´Yes, I’m OK.´ He was fine, he did not have a single scratch. And it took me like fifty minutes to climb out of this shaft in this narrow passage in darkness, climb about thirty metres of ladder till I reached some other guy who lit my carbide lamp. And I went up and when I saw the jackhammer which I held in my hand before, it was bent. And the wooden support beams were also broken. And this rock was in the place where I was standing before. Now tell me how is it possible that I was not killed? It kicked me in my butt. And I had two metres of space there. Had I fallen into that hole, I would have been killed too, because the rocks had fallen in it as well. But instead I jumped over that hole and so did my friend. Nothing happened to me. It was a real miracle. I don’t know, perhaps your mind just switches off in a moment like this and you don’t remember anything... I don’t remember anything.”

“While in Jáchymov, I made six attempts and all of them failed. I was coaxed into some of them: ´Vlastík, I got a great idea, we will escape through the sewer, I know the way for sure.´ I did not believe it anymore, for there were many of them like that. We already knew that some of the prisoners were narkers, they were mostly criminals. They enjoyed greater popularity than we, because for them we were nobodies, thieves, the worst scum. While these thieves were not dangerous to them. Because they had stolen something and got a one or two year penalty. I became careful after that. But right the other day I was called and put straight into a correction cell. For escape. I said: ´He mentioned something.´ ´And why haven’t you reported it?´ I did not report that he wanted to escape, because I was not a narker and I never wanted to become one, because if one reported on a friend, some severe punishment followed. Some were beaten so brutally I have never seen it in my life. For instance, while I was in the Rovnost camp: these inmates wore black clothes, to be distinguishable from us. While we wore light clothes and brown fleecy smocks in winter. So one of these guys came there, the policemen no longer needed him, so they kicked him out, and the guys, when they saw him coming from the gate, made a circle around him, he got in the middle and he already knew things were bad for him. He was already beyond help. In five minutes it was over before the guards could come. When they found out what was happening there, they came there and put him into a correction cell for one day and then carried him away the other day, we don’t know where. Some narkers were punished this way, because it was quite dangerous. There were people who would, in order to be released on probation, make up a false story that you were planning an escape or receiving letters from home through some of the civilian employees, and so on.”

“Imagine that there were fifty of us in one room in the Leopoldov prison. In Jáchymov, there were double bunks, it was the same everywhere, also in Leopoldov, so there had been some twenty to twenty-five of us. And now in Leopoldov there were fifty people, you can imagine, old geezers, young guys, and the stench that was there. You could not stand it. And they did not heat the cells too much. We had the windows open. If it was freezing, if it was twenty below zero, we had blankets. Each of us got two or three blankets. We would make a sort of a sleeping bag from them, put it over our heads and tie here in the bottom part and you got in there, including your head, you crouched to make it warmer as you were breathing, and you were warm: Well, I survived. If I had not survived, I would not have been here.”

“I was not lucky. There, when we walked we were bound around with a rope, the whole shift was bound by a rope, which was tight so that we would not be able to escape. Between that there was a fenced corridor, and there were guards with dogs walking on both sides. Thus it was impossible to escape. They would shoot you as soon as... We walked like that for about a year. In winter it was terrible. We had rubber boots with holes, and there was water down there. The mine number seven was a recent one, fifty metres deep, and water was rushing in there, we were all wet. And outside the temperatures were twenty below zero or even less. That place was called Czech Siberia.”