Václav Růžička

“From Nikolaj, we had to walk to the Eduard mine, which was about three kilometers away. We were moving in what was called the prisoners’ bus. We were in groups of five. They tied us together with a rope and they locked it with a lock. We were packed one on the other. It was very slow until this bunch of people set into motion and if one of them fell on the ground, the rest of them fell with him. We were tied by the waist and locked. That was really harsh.”

“In the middle of Nikolaj, there was a camp inside a camp. A house for state political prisoners. The regime there was tough. Around there were the co called ‘hounds’, criminal cases. The guards tried to take advantage of their aggressive behavior and to send them against us. The situation was really bad, but then it stopped when they took the criminals away and the camp was entirely political. That was an advantage because we could rely on each other. There was a large number of informers, but everybody knew who they were. We knew each other well.”

“The waste was taken behind the fences of the camp. The guards occasionally searched through the carts with waste rock that were taken to the landfill, emptied and carried back. A lot of escapes were done in a way that a prisoner let himself be closed in a box and covered with rock. They went through the guards and escaped. Then they took measures that the guards occasionally picked the waste to search for boxes. They did it with long pneumatic drills. Once when we were ready to leave, the sound of the picking suddenly stopped. Lights went out like in a theatre, they were everywhere. They pushed the cart to a side track opened the side of the cart. Meanwhile, the commando for hunting of prisoners came with the machineguns. They gathered around the cart and shouted at the prisoners to come out. They tipped it out and the box emerged. Then another order to come out of the box. Nothing. A courageous policeman opened the side of the box and it was dark inside. He took a light and pointed it into the box. In the middle of the box there was a hat and when he lifted it, there was a large shit underneath, a nice one. We were very delighted that we managed to prepare a joke like that. But you can’t imagine what came next. We had to stand into a formation and: ’Stand up! Lay down! Stand up! Lay down!’ but we did it with joy, because that was an extremely good joke.”

“It was the preparation and organizing and a vision of what to do. And there were also the newsletters. And what about? For example, on the first of May, we distributed information about what the first of May was before and how the communists had misused it. We wanted the people to know where the republic was going. But we didn’t get very far in those activities. We were tidied away quite soon.”

“We had to get up at three for the night shift. The breakfast was very modest, just black coffee. In Nikolaj, we had rations of bread for each three days. Those were small loafs. I wonder what their weight was. They were divided into quarters and you had the quarter for three days. I also got used to it, that I let the bread harden a bit. I still do it nowadays. You eat fresh bread too fast, while hard bread lasts longer, and then it was enough for the whole period.”