“It was bad in Elko. They trampled our diner. In Bytíz, we brought in some twigs and had huge trouble for that. We had to stay outside in a snowstorm while they were searching our rooms. The worst thing about it was that they wouldn’t let us clean the mess up. Afterwards they turned off the lights and we had to go directly to our beds and sleep in the mass they had made. I didn’t know where my things were. That was awful. I don’t remember a single good Christmas in Jáchymovsko. Sometimes we’d have Christmas afternoons with the Boy Scouts. There was a guy there who was collecting dried bread. He would crush it before Christmas and use the crumbles for making ginger-cakes, when he found some sugar. That was pretty good. We had a somewhat better food on Christmas, but they would rarely let us eat it in peace.”
“My wife asked me afterwards why I hadn’t told them anything more specific. All I told her was that I had been in jail. I have a universal answer for all those who ask me this question: “There are some things that 80% of the people just won’t believe. And when they say “That can’t be true”, I take it as an insult of those who left their lives there. That’s why I preferred to keep quiet. Nowadays, when someone asks me about it - and the kids in the schools are posing pretty detailed questions - I have no problem talking about it. I tell them all the details they want to know. I’m aware of one thing, however. If I should talk about all those things, I could go on for a month without a break. One episode would follow another. I could go on talking about it from morning till the evening – it would take no end. I don’t like to reopen my own old wounds by those memories, because then I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing. Instead of “Faithful We Stay” it would be “Painful we stay” (laughing).”
“The day after the surgery, the nurse – a Boy Scout member – came to me and told me: ´we’ll take you to the surgery now.´ I turned around and wanted to tell her: ´Hanka, don’t fool around, I was there yesterday.´ But when I saw the way she looked at me I realized that something was going on. Therefore I only said: “alright”. She still looked very strictly. So they took me to the surgery, put me on a table and the doctor – also a Boy Scout – who gave me the shot the previous day, took a huge needle, the same one he used the day before, and I just hoped that he would see the plaster. He leaned towards me and whispered in my ear: ´The three guys that came to the room are state-police agents. They’re after you. Tomorrow, you’ll fall unconscious. The nurse will be checking the patients’ temperature tomorrow morning and you’ll fall unconscious, you can handle that, can you? I’ll order your transfer to the surgery, but the ambulance driver will drop you off somewhere behind the hospital gate. You’ll have civilian clothes in the ambulance. After you get off the ambulance, may God be with you.´ And so it was. The next day I started falling unconscious.”
“I asked them for the name of my investigator and some contact information. I was grateful to this man and wanted to thank him. Unfortunately, I forgot his name. I found out his name in 1968 because I was looking for him at the secret state police (StB) headquarters. At first, they told me such a person doesn’t exist and they asked what I wanted from him. I told them that I just wanted to thank him, that he was the only human among wolves. They gave me some strange looks but after a few days they arranged a meeting with him for me. The meeting was in Koruna, which is a shopping arcade on the Wenceslas Square. It’s a place with many escape routes so that’s probably why he accepted it. But eventually he didn’t run anywhere, we actually met. I was there with the sister of my commander Rendl and my uncle. We thanked him. He told us that he didn’t stay long with the secret police, that he didn’t like the job and that he eventually left their ranks.”
“It all culminated on Christmas 1952. There was a slip of the tongue of the new cultural officer, who said that the miners should get wine for Christmas. The camp commander wouldn’t have none of it but his superior supported the idea. He said: ´That’s right, you’re miners, you should have a portion of wine.´ It was constantly changing – there’s gonna be Christmas, there’s not gonna be any Christmas. A day before Christmas a canister of wine was brought in. Everyone got a quarter of a liter of red wine. We were also given better food. We had a steak with potato salad, some apples, oranges and peanuts. There was real fish soup.”
We’d go and smash a shop window or beat up an official. That’s not resistance. Resistance activities have to be carefully planned in order to get the biggest possible impact on the enemy and minimum losses in one’s own ranks.
Karel Plocek was born in 1930 in Žižkov in Prague. Although he doesn’t live there anymore, he still considers himself to be a Žižkov inhabitant. In the time of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia he was a member of the then-illegal Boy Scout movement. He was a liaison between various resistance groups with the connivance of his father. Mr. Plocák became an eye witness of the street fighting that took place in Žižkov during the liberation of Prague. He did his apprenticeship and after 1948, he participated in the organization of illegal border crossings for people fleeing from Czechoslovakia. He was injured in a parachute jump during his military service. While he was on curative leave, he joined the anti-Communist resistance again. He was arrested in the end of 1951 and sentenced to “only” 13 years of imprisonment (for lack of evidence). He was through camps in Rtyně in the Krkonoše foothills, in Bytíz and in „Elko” in Vykmanov. He was amnestied in 1960. He was an active member of the Confederation of Political Prisoners, a Boy Scout division leader (Division of Velen Fanderlík) and a chief editor of the magazine “Věrni zůstaneme” (“Faithfull We Stay”). He died on January 16, 2009.
