František Teplý

“We drove to the Příbram train station. It was already at a time when they were releasing people from jail. They took us to the station and in ten minutes, the train arrived. We boarded it and went away. I got on the train at about two o’ clock that night. My train went to Prague. But I couldn't believe it. I thought ... as did the Germans when they transported people to the concentration camps ... they might as well take us to Siberia. So I immediately got out of the train and ran away. I was hiding in the bushes all night long and in the morning, trains were arriving and departing, cars were bringing prisoners, there were no dogs ... nothing like that. So when dawn came, I crossed the tracks and ran into town. I went to Svatá Hora to thank Virgin Mary for my survival. There I attended the first mass and then I returned back to the city. I saw some school children and they seemed unbelievable to me – such little people. I hadn’t seen such small people for almost six years.”

“I once used to know a pretty nice teacher and we told ourselves that we’d marry. About two hours later I was picked up by the secret police and I’ve never seen this girl again, neither have I ever again heard of her.”

“Then in the eighties, for whatever reason they had mercy with me and allowed me to study. I passed the appropriate exams and obtained a PuDr degree. From this point on I was able to get jobs that were adequate for that degree. If you do not remember exactly what a PuDr means – it basically means a railway worker (“Posunovač U DRahy”). I worked as a railway worker until my retirement.”

“At that time, in the great frost, someone had the idea to throw down into the mines (where waste was brought in) a 2.5 m long tree trunk. But it fell about ten footsteps away from the path where we were emptying the ashes. If you left that path, the guards could shoot you without a warning. We talked about it all the time - we called it a ‘stick’. So after about a week it was up to me to carry out the ashes. I really wanted to see it. So I got lined up as the last one and when I turned around I saw that beam. At that moment I realized the absurdity of my position. We were freezing even though we had fire wood right under our nose. It was very inhumane in my opinion. So I put down the bucket and went to grab that stick. One step, two steps, three steps... my heart was running high ... as if it wanted to jump out of my mouth ... so I gritted my teeth and walked on. The fourth step, fifth step, sixth step ... at that moment it got very quiet there and all the men looked at me incredulously. But all I thought about at that very moment was just the stick in front of me and the frantic beating of my heart. The seventh step, eighth step, ninth step ... when I stopped at the stick I was very dizzy. So I slowly lifted up the log and put it on my shoulders, then I slowly turned around and walked back with it. At that point, the guards could no longer shoot me. They could have shot me in the back as that would have been classified as a killing during a break-out attempt. But to shoot an inmate from the front – that would be much harder for them to argue the case. At that moment I knew that my soul had remained free, that nobody could ever take away my inner freedom again.”

“I got a pretty serious moral blow in 1957 when they declared that in a couple of hours a Soviet missile would take a satellite into orbit. I didn’t believe it and took it for more Bolshevik propaganda – you know, the usual stuff. At takeoff, a part of the rocket was supposed to be visible due to the glow, so they brought this to our attention. They said it will shine at about five o‘clock in the afternoon. So we watched it, the whole crowd stood in the yard – and it really took off. It was a great disappointment for me that the Russians were already so far.”