The Prague Post
October 8th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Real Estate Prague Prague Rentals Prague Apartments Prague Art & Antiques

Home » Archives » News

Former prisoners revisit labor sites

A look at 'Jáchymov Hell' through the eyes of two survivors

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 4th, 2008 issue

Photos courtesy of Zdeněk Kovařík
Confederation of Political Prisoners Chairwoman Naděžda Kavalírová, left, takes part in the ceremony May 24 at the Horní Slavkov cemetery.
enlarge
A crown of thorns hangs on a cross monument at Horní Slavkov.
enlarge
Former prisoners attend the Tower of Death memorial, where people were forced into the dangerous job of separating uranium ore.
enlarge
Karel Král leads a quiet life. At 79, he and his wife Eva Králová seldom venture outside of their third-story apartment on a residential street in Prague 7. So, when an unannounced visitor knocks on their door and inquires about their experiences as prisoners in forced labor camps in the 1950s, they are understandably startled.
Imprisoned during the political processes that took place in communist Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1956, the Králs belong to a group of around 60,000 prisoners who were sentenced to forced labor in the uranium mines near the town of Jáchymov, west Bohemia.
On May 24, hundreds of these former prisoners clustered at the former campsites for an annual remembrance ceremony they call Jáchymov Hell.
Walking through the camps, the aging crowd laid wreaths at various memorials and gave speeches criticizing Czech society’s failure to come to terms with its communist past.
“It’s a holiday for us. We’re all old guys now, canes and crutches everywhere, leaning on each other to get there,” said Stanislav Stránský, chairman of the Association of Former Political Prisoners (SBPV). “There’s a quiet understanding that you come to Jáchymov Hell no matter what.”
While statistics differ, experts estimate a total of 100,000 prisoners were sent to forced labor camps in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, many of them serving harsh sentences for what the communist state classified as political crimes.
Král’s crime was the distribution of hundreds of typewritten posters urging citizens to resist the communist government.
In 1951, he was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and eventually transported to the Rovnost, or “Equality” labor camp in the Jáchymov uranium mines.
Here he spent six years toiling in the mine, laying tracks and loading carts with uranium ore for the development of Russian nuclear warheads.
“Every morning, we would descend into the shaft,” Král recalls. “We were chained together in groups of five and guarded by policemen with machine guns.”
With the camp devoid of safety regulations and overseen by “barbaric” guards, deaths and injuries were not uncommon, he said.
Perhaps the most notorious guard was Albín Dvořák, whom the prisoners nicknamed the equivalent of “Tom Thumb” for his short stature. Formerly a low-ranking officer, Dvořák catapulted to the status of commander after he killed a prisoner who tried to escape.
“Tom Thumb was an egoist. He had a complex because he was short,” said Král. “We had some tough times with him.”
He recalled a particularly brutal incident in which a prisoner was castigated for making a derogatory comment about Soviet dictator Stalin and communist Czechoslovak President Klement Gottwald.
“It was the middle of winter. They took him to interrogation and let him stand outside all night wearing nothing but light rags,” Král said. “He was dead in the morning.”
Despite the psychological terror, the sufferings Stránský and Král remember the most are hunger and cold. Sustained on a diet of dry, moldy bread, margarine and occasional potatoes, the laboring prisoners learned to be resourceful when it came to dining. “I didn’t mind the mold that much,” Stránský recalls. “I used to wrap it in a foot-rag and crush it up after scraping off some of the fungus. I only got sick once.”
Coping with the past
While rummaging for her prison release papers in the cupboard, Králová discovers a miniature rag doll clothed in rough fabrics. “This is what we used to wear,” she said, running her thumb over the doll’s ruglike skirt. The doll, she explained, was an effigy of a female prisoner. “We used to make little things like this all the time.”
Králová and her parents were arrested in 1952 for failing to report an acquaintance who was living in hiding after returning from illegal emigration. “He couldn’t handle it abroad, so he came back,” she said. “My parents and I were sentenced to more than three years, just because we knew about it.”
For Králová, the most trying aspect of being a political prisoner was not the imprisonment itself, but the social exclusion that followed. “They took away our apartment, and I could only find low-paying, menial jobs,” she said. “Everyone looked at us like we were trash.”
Like most of the living Jáchymov survivors and other political prisoners, the Králs received generous government compensation for their ordeals due to the lobbying efforts of the Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV) in the 1990s. Nevertheless, their dissatisfaction with the current political situation mirrors those of their fellow political prisoners, who often criticize politicians and judges for their unwillingness to fully rehabilitate their peers.
“Most political prisoners feel that the communist regime was never fully coped with,” said Tomáš Bursík, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. “On one hand, I agree with them, but I also think they are too reclusive. They should open themselves up to [public discussions and events] rather than complaining of society’s flawed morals.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


Other articles in News (4/06/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Reader's comments:

add your comment
[18:43 05/06/2008] : To compare things and events is a sign of being human and being intelligent.
Communist "Jachymov Hell" slave labor camp can be compared to the Nazi slave labor underground camp "Dora".
The story about "Jachymov Hell" opens up a debate about communist crimes during Stalin's grip on power.
Naturally, as in Nazi Germany, dictator Stalin could not accomplish such crime alone. There was a communist criminal apparatus of the willing and the guilty.
Whereas the names of the major Nazi criminals are known, the communist regime criminals are living in quiet retirement in Russia and the Czech Republic, relatively untouched.
What is still needed is a "Communist hunter Simon Wiesenthal" type of organization/person, so justice would be served on those guilty, once and for all.
Paul Zellman
Los Angeles
Note: Comments that include profanity, personal attacks or any other inappropriate material are prohibited.  

Add your comment


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.