Jan Petrucha

“It didn’t take long, and another stetsec [State Security officer - trans.] came in for me, took me out, led me out of the building, and we went down Kunovická Street, we didn’t speak together, I had to stay two steps ahead of him, and: ‘Turn now.’ Into a private house. We turned into a private house, he led me into a cellar, into a kind of room, on the one side about arm’s length and just three metres long. He sat me down behind a table, took out a pistol, put it on the table: ‘And now you’ll start talking.’ Outside the building, in a cellar. That was the worst moment of the whole prison time, of what I experienced. Clueless, helpless, and I saw that I was practically a gonner. So, when he put the pistol on the table and told me to talk... I talked, but in the end he squeezed out of me... He said: ‘I’ll guide you along, so you know whom to tell us about. Who you collaborated with, who your friends were,’ and stuff like that. Those were dreadful moments down there. So what could I do but say some of the names. So one of them was František Hlaváč, who I knew was already locked up. And then my best friend from Lipov, I named him and thought: ‘He’ll understand me.’ But he had already prepared himself when they locked me up, so he had erased all the traces and prepared his response. And I, thanks to my [previous] insolence, ended up okay as well. So, I was in Hradiště for four months, and then they took the whole of our Orel group and moved us to Brno in June 1949, and they put us all on trial that June.”

“[Q: Remember that last week in the labour camp. You had given away all your good clothes with the idea that you would survive the week, and...] It was in the winter. It was minus ten, fifteen degrees in the night, but up to plus fifteen degrees in the day. Everything thawed, turned to sludge, and I was wearing the same kind of shoes that I used to have to begin with back in Prokop, so I had to walk in them for that week... except I didn’t have any rags or anything any more; what I had on my feet was all I had. And I’d put them on again wet in the morning, and we’d start weaving. All of us who were to be released in a few days or within the week. And my release day was Sunday, unfortunately, so I had to be there the whole week. From Sunday to Sunday. And we wove those security fences out of barbed wire for those who worked in the mine. I didn’t even have anywhere to dry those shoes overnight, we didn’t have any heating there. So the last week was almost the worst. It was terrible, I was so exhausted that I thought I wouldn’t live to see the end of it – mentally or physically, the cold, the frozen, wet feet. Constantly, wet, cold. There was nowhere to dry oneself, nor the shoes. So I gave all the good things to my friends and stayed like that without anything... [Q: What did they release you with? With the clothes you were wearing?] No, no, they gave me my own clothes.”