Petr Záleský

“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.”