Corporal Miloslav Šafrán

“Miloslav Šafrán, born December 7th1924. My family upbringing was, like with the majority of the people then, quite religious. As a pupil, I attended the local Sokol organization in Kylešovice, today it is a part of Opava. And I studied the elementary in Kylešovice and then for four years at a junior high school in Opava. And after I finished this school, the German army occupied our region. For the place where we lived was a part of the Sudetenland. And at that time the Arbeitsamt, or employment office, had me to choose from three vocations. I could go to a vocational school to become a glass-maker, a carpenter or a bricklayer. So I chose carpentry. I felt affinity to wood-working already since I was a young boy; in school they taught us to use a scroll saw for carving wooden dolls, and so on. And I became an apprentice in a German company called Adolf Kromer. After three years of apprenticeship, after I was free again, the Germans declared that my year of birth – that is 1924, I was already eighteen then – will be sent as Totaleinsatz to do forced labour in Germany.”

“When we finally reached our region, nothing was sure yet. So we were still hiding, not with our relatives, but with our friends instead, because we expected they could start looking for us in the family first. But meanwhile we learnt from the friends who provided us with shelter that the Red Army was approaching and that our place will be liberated by the first Czechoslovak tank brigade, which was part of the Red Army. So we waited for them near Bolatice on Albertovec. Some soldiers from the tank brigade were already there, so we met them and gradually got to know them better, we went through a short training and then we all assembled in the Vítkov stadium. A great meeting was held there and we were expected there by the Hero of the Soviet Union Josef Buršík. And from there the tank brigade – actually it was composed of three troops, the first, the second, and the third – moved to Milovice, I got there with the third troop. And we were there already as fully trained tankists. Before that, however, we took part in some fighting there, we participated in cleaning the forests in the Bruntál region, for the members of the so-called Werwolf units were still hiding there. They were German soldiers, who did not want to fight any more, but they carried out attacks against local civilians. And we needed to prevent that. Although the war was nearly over, some of these partisan-like units were still causing problems there. Our task was to reestablish order, and we eventually succeeded. It happened near the Andělská hora mountain; we caught about twelve of them, and held them captives. And only later we learnt that they had been transported there from somewhere else. We do not know, because they were picked up by a special unit which came for them and which was in charge of these issues. They were in uniforms for sure, and they were well-armed soldiers; they came all the way from Stalingrad, so they were immensely experienced in conducting operations like this. And also, there were some dead on our side. Today I do not recall their names anymore. And naturally, there were cases when some of them were trialed. And some were even shot there. For they knew very well that it was either us, or them.”

“If there is something I could tell today’s young people, I would urge them not to hesitate when our country is endangered. Not to wait for anything, and if it is at least slightly possible, even at the risk that they might not succeed, to join the army or some similar organization as quickly as possible, which would guarantee or which could in some way crush the evil that had befallen us. No matter how. But at all cost, not to let any group - be it fascists or communists - terrorize the nation again and bring it to the same situation as it happened to us. I will already turn eighty this year, but nevertheless, if I were at least partly able to do something, I would not hesitate.”

“To my mother they cancelled the pension she had been receiving all those years on behalf of my father, who was a legionnaire. And I loudly protested against this. I considered it so mean, when I realized that even those Germans whom we hated so much let my Mom keep receiving her pension, which was duly hers since the time of the first Masaryk´s republic because of her legionnaire husband. And to imagine, that Germans normally continued to send it to her every month, and in 1948 the communists cancelled it without any warning or explanation and suddenly she was receiving it no more. Only in 1968 they granted her this pension again. But it was only for a brief period of time, because my mother died shortly after, so it was of no use to her. And this left me with a very bitter memory of the whole communist regime, which of course rewarded me by declaring me an enemy of state and sentencing me to sixteen years for high treason. I spent more than ten years behind the bars, nearly eleven. And for nine years from that period I worked in uranium mines. I have many memories of this time, nasty memories of course. And this is what still lingers in my memory: that these people, be it my relatives or others, had done no harm to anyone. Only because some injustice was done to them, and they spoke about it publicly. Naturally they were not adherents of the communist regime, and this is what happened to hem, such was their end.”

“The uranium mines were liquidation camps, concentration camps, where no one cared what would happen to you; they lacked even the most basic protective gear. Not even gloves. And the uranium ore from our country had the highest amount of uranium. No other place in the world had such high quality uranium ore. Therefore was such strong demand for our uranium, which we were forced to mine under terrible circumstances and then it was all exported to the Soviet Union. The Soviets must have had so much of it that they would not know what to do with it, because uranium from all our mines was transported there daily, from all the camps in the Jáchymov region, and there were at least ten mining shafts. These were used purely for uranium ore. Plus there was the Příbram region, with five or six shafts, producing large amounts of uranium. We had set norms. When we arrived to the camp, the norm was twenty centimeters broken rock per person , after a few years they raised the limit to 120 centimeters, because of the advancement of technical equipment. But it was not really because of the technical equipment, but because the prisoners gradually became more skilled. They became excellent miners. And only because they all wanted to survive. They introduced three categories of food vouchers: the worst one was green, for those who did not meet the hundred percent limit. They received a simple miner’s meal without meat, just three slices of dumplings, some sauce and a kind of a soup. Those who completed hundred percent of the limit received meat with their meals. Not much, but it was enough to feed you. And then there was a third voucher, a red one, and this carried some advantages with it, like being allowed to write letters home more often. Those who did not meet the norm could not receive visitors, could not write letters, nothing. And there was also the second shif. Just when they returned from work after their normal daily shift was over, in a while they were called by the loudspeakers: Secons shift roll call! This is how they treated people there. From the Bratrství camp in Jáchymov I was later transferred to Příbram, and from there I was eventually released in the amnesty. So I spent a long time there, about eight years. …So I knew it very well there. There was an underground bunker, and there they would imprison those who broke the camp’s disciplinary rules. It had no ventilation, nothing. And some people even died there… without air. And in winter, it was sheer horror.”