After three days of interrogations, I wanted to jump out the window
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Vladimír Prchal was born on 26 May 1922 in Slatiňany. From 1942 he was forcibly deployed in Berlin in Reinickendorf as a toolmaker in an aircraft engine factory. He was then transferred to the Ambi-Budd Presswerk factory. Here he met a communist anti-Nazi resistance fighter, through whom he became involved in the distribution of anti-Nazi leaflets. Before that, he had a fight with a German colleague at his first workplace, and after some time he was arrested for this and imprisoned for three months from December 1942. After his release, he was again assigned to the Ambi-Budd Presswerk factory, but in February or March 1944 he decided to flee to his parents in Pardubice. Due to the numerous visits of the gendarmes and the fact that everyone already knew that Vladimír Prchal was hiding with his parents, he decided to turn himself in. After his arrest, he was transported to Ruzyně prison and then to Alexanderplatz prison in Berlin, where he was interrogated for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. He was sent to the “chopping plant” in Plötzensee and then travelled via Dresden, Plavno, Leipzig and Ingolstadt to the Dachau concentration camp in October 1944. He stayed there until the liberation by the American army on 29 April 1945, but due to forced quarantine and convalescence, he stayed until May. On 23 May 1945, he returned to Pardubice and then worked in Trutnov in a textile factory and then at the post office. He disagreed with the emerging communist practices and, after the police intercepted a letter criticising the situation in the estate of the late minister Jan Masaryk, he was arrested and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for insulting the minister on 23 December 1948. However, he was amnestied almost immediately and was able to return to his wife and newly born child. He then worked at Plynostav until his retirement. At the time of filming (2014), Vladimír Prchal lived in Pardubice.
