Vilém Šindelka

"There was a corridor with rails, and a shaft was leading up there from that corridor. Inside the shaft there were chutes and ladders which were used for taking the material from the vein. We got into this corridor and climbed the shaft and we were looking for a place which would be near the wire fence. We discovered that there was another corridor leading from this shaft, which was parallel with the corridor below, but running some twenty or twenty-five metres above it. There were two working-places. One was open and there was nothing in it, and we could get in there. The other working-place was closed with a concrete block. We guessed that this working-place led to the fence, to the border. If we reached the surface at its end, we might be able to break through. We were digging under the concrete, taking turns. One of us would always go up there with the gear, hammer and pickaxe, and keep digging upwards. We were progressing by centimetres. Eventually we got out. There was that corridor and a firing zone on the surface. There were two posts. We managed to reach the end of the corridor and we got out onto the surface there. On the other side, there was the post, and then only the firing zone. And there we were already free. All this took nearly a year."

"They were already waiting there with cars. They were masked and hidden. They had camouflage uniforms and all this and they were already waiting there behind trees. I already sensed that this was not normal. I had taken my shoes off, and I was thus walking so quietly, that I could not have even broken a twig or anything like that."

"After our escape to Germany, the second time we escaped, we crossed the border to East Germany. We were detained there. We were walking a street and there was some taxi driver, or an agent of their secret police, and we kept walking that street and then they surrounded us. Later we learned that the German taxi driver had turned us in. We were held by the Germans before they handed us over to the Prague policemen at the border. These policemen took us to Prague for interrogation. After that they took us to the labour camp in order to let that prisoners know that we had been captured. Then we were in Příbram and in Prague-Pankrác. And after that we were taken to Leopoldov."