“We had to get up at four. Those who went for the morning shift had to get up at four. We had to dress up quickly, take coffee and bread and that was all we could have. When we did not meet the plan, it was horrible. If you did not fulfill the plan, they placed you in a punishment barrack and, you know, there were bugs. I fell asleep and the other guys were throwing shoes at me. I asked: ‘What’s the matter?’ - ‘You are snoring and we cannot sleep.’ My wife often gets bitten by mosquitoes, but I never get bitten. I was there for so long until the house became full. Then we had to do work on feather plucking. They brought in a bag of feathers and opened it and there was the leader - he was a political prisoner as well, and they appointed him as leader - and we had to pluck a determined weight of feathers and only when a certain amount was processed, the leader would say: ‘Guys, I will weigh it all together and I can report that we can go for lunch.’ Only then we were allowed to go for lunch. And the feathers smelled so bad, that was awful. When I worked on wood processing, the guys said: ‘Let’s call it a day, finished. We have already fulfilled the plan, so that’s it.’ There were kind of cauldrons and various kinds of wood were being lowered into them and it was a hard work. Those guys were stronger and they were able to do it, but when you were unable to meet the plan when a signal for work’s end was sounded, we had to stop and the leaders had to report that we had been unable to complete 100%. We then had to step aside and that meant that we did not receive food, and instead we had to go to the place where feathers were processed, or they would give us a rake and we would have to rake the area around the camp until it was all raked. That was done so that footprints would be visible if somebody crossed it. Everything was done in a stricter way.”
“I was then handed over to some StB policeman. ‘What do you have, where do you have it?’ As an idiot, I said that I had various books in the hallway and he went there and he ransacked everything. I had some precious books there, with things which were important for me to know… well, twenty-five books. I could not tell them that I prayed. After the interrogation, I divided the day for myself so that in the morning I would pray the way of the cross, the holy mass at noon and in the evening I would pray a rosary using my fingers (I thus had it divided into three parts). They were sending various people to me. One of them was an older man and he told me: ‘I think that I will die here, this guy does not want to speak to me.’ I was not sleeping yet and so I could hear him. One night the StB men woke me up, there were three of them, and they had some of the books with them. They began interrogating me: ‘Do you know that this priest had a child somewhere? Do you know that he would not go to study theology?’ They disrupted me psychologically so much that I did not know what was happening to me. They were not beating me, but they tortured my psychically in a horrible way and they kept telling me that I certainly must have had something with women. I kept telling them that I have never had anything with any girl. ‘Do not pressure me then.’ This interrogation was so horrible. They were moving me from place to place in order to disorientate me. I did not know anything and the wardens were changing frequently… Then, when we had to take a shower, we had to shower in cold water, and they checked us in all places, they looked into my ass. They tortured me psychically in a horrible way. One of the Stb men who took over my case made me stand in the middle of the room and he walked around me, saying: ‘Just imagine, what it would be like if I could smash your face so that blood would be spurting from you, that would do me so good.’ But since Stalin had died, the communists were not allowed to do it, and they were more lenient and they could no longer beat us.”
“I was arrested in Dubňany when I finished my work as a railway man. They brought me to Hodonín and they left me there until midnight and one policeman from the police station there was watching me. He was watching me so that I would not run away. Where would I run? The StB man then came there and he told me: ‘Come with me.’ I did not know where I was going or what was happening. ‘Come and sit here with me and we will go.’ As we were driving, I did not even know the villages that we were passing through. We arrived to Hradiště and I asked: ‘Where am I?’ - ‘Well, come here, come here.’ So I followed him and an iron door opened and I had to go in. It was from the back. There is a court building in the front and in the back there is a prison. When they locked me up there, I did not know what to do and one of the wardens came to me and said: ‘Come with me, we will do a sort of an interview.’ He checked my hands and the way I walked and everything and he was asking me questions so that he could assess how quickly I responded and so on. They led me to the second floor and they gave me some rags. There were no proper clothes, it was without buttons and there was no belt and anything and these were already the clothes for the interrogation. When I put them on, I began to feel uneasy. ‘Come with me to this and this place.’ So I went with the warden and he put me in a dungeon, I did not even know its number, nothing. ‘You will stay here and that’s it.’ So I remained in the dungeon and they left me there, and the light bulb was kept on all the time. When I turned to the other side, the warden would immediately strike on the door: ‘You need to turn here, so that the light bulb shines on you.’ And so I had to turn right and I had interrogations all the time and the light bulb was still on. I thought how furious I would be at them, because the uncle next door advised me: ‘Never talk about anything and be tough with them.’ Well, that’s easy to say, but then, when they get hold of you, you soften, because they were… (Petr’s wife joins in) They were threatening him: ‘We will send your children to an institution!’ They were threatening him that I would get evicted and that they would break up the family, so that’s why.”
Petr Záleský was born June 21, 1927 in Mutěnice in the Hodonín region. After completing elementary school he apprenticed as a shop assistant. Their family’s house was destroyed by Germans when the war front was passing through the region in April 1945. Petr went to Prague to gain some work experience and while there, he also encountered the activities of the Association of Catholic Youth. He returned home a year later, because the family received money for the construction of a new house. Petr worked in the company Pramen Hodonín. He and his brother František were tearing down communist posters. Petr was drafted to do military service in 1949 in Prešov, but due to his political untrustworthiness he was transported to the Dukla coal mine in Ostrava shortly after to work there as a miner. He returned home seventeen months later. Petr was fired from the Pramen company and he thus went to learn the machine turner’s trade. In the mean time, the collectivization process in Mutěnice kept advancing. Petr married Julie Trávníková in October 1953. Together with his brother František they were disseminating poems with anti-communist themes. They received the so-called Message of Fatima from Prague, and the police soon got hold of the document. František was arrested in August 1958 and Petr got arrested as well at the beginning of September. They were both interned in Uherské Hradiště. After a trial in January 1959 they were transported to the camp Bytíz in the Příbram region where they were interned until the amnesty in 1960. After their release, Petr worked as a switchman for the railway company. After the Velvet Revolution, he became active in the Confederation of Political Prisoners and he worked with the youth. Petr Záleský has three sons. Petr Záleský died on 11 March 2021.
1916 - Petr Záleský's father. This photograph has an interesting history: the young man sent this picture to his father to a POW camp in Italy during WWI. The postcard reached him and the grandfather of Petr safely overcame all hardships and returned home
1916 - Petr Záleský's father. This photograph has an interesting history: the young man sent this picture to his father to a POW camp in Italy during WWI. The postcard reached him and the grandfather of Petr safely overcame all hardships and returned home
