“We arrived – fifteen of us – lead by a corporal holding a revolver. He was scared to let us go to the bathroom so that we wouldn’t escape. From the train station we could see some flashes and the typical smell of Ostrava’s blast furnaces. They loaded us into trucks and drove to the Pokrok camp. It was located by the Pokrok mine and our 55th Auxiliary Technical Battalion was in charge of Pokrok, Hedvika and Ludvík mines. It was at night when they assigned us to rooms. The boys there were just about waking up. We were weather-beaten while they were pale with coal-colored eyelashes. So we accommodated ourselves and the next day I went to work in reloading. While waiting for the mining tower, it was the first time that I saw blackened miners walk out. Then we got in – the first and third cage floor. Then it moved, the second and fourth floor came in, then they rang the bell five times and we began our descent. I was gulping, it felt to be moving real fast. We heard voices from down there while descending. Than another cage passed by us, going up. The walls were made of perforated tin and we could see lamp lights through. With a hefty swing we stopped at the bottom. We got out to a lit blazing place. That miner of mine was looking after me all the time so that I wouldn’t get lost. We walked for over a kilometer through the main ditch with rails in the center. Suddenly, a blast – I bumped my head. One of the ceiling beams was lower. Had I not had a helmet, I would have cracked my skull. The miner took out a piece of chalk and told me: ‘Write down: heads down, dude, you’re at a mine.’”
“Now, imagine, we worked Sundays. For each Sunday shift done by each soldier the company commander received 5 CZK from the mining company. So, each Friday, sixty to seventy people would go to work until Sunday. I worked thirty-nine Sundays throughout 1951. But then in 1952 the defense minister Čepička issued an order stating that soldiers working in mines must not work more than one Sunday shift each month and that it has to be voluntary. I asked a senior soldier what was the number of the order and he said: ‘You don’t need to ask, it is an order of the defense minister so it’s settled.’ Then on Friday the captain came over, reading the names of seventy people who were about to work the Sunday shift. I responded: ‘Comrade Captain but the defense minister said that we have those Sundays written off.’ He replied: ‘Well, the minister of defense does not know that coal has to be mined, that it is of vital importance.’ I said that he surely knows that but he issued the order anyway. The Captain said: ‘You have two options, comrade. Either you file an official complaint which we won’t allow to get further through the hierarchy or you bypass the procedure and we lock you up.’ But there were guys among us who were in prison prior to that. They escaped to Prague to file a complaint with the ministry that the minister’s order is being ignored. They heard them out there and even issued them a travel order so that they wouldn’t get arrested on the way back. They also wrote to the battalion that those guys stay under protection until the end of the investigation. The guys were telling us: ‘See, we sorted it out for all of you, you chicken shits.’ They were heroes to us. Three weeks later a commission from the ministry came over, investigated the whole things and those guys were sentenced to a year in prison for having arbitrarily left the unit.”
Miloš Kučera was born on 17 November 1925 in Prague. His father was a clerk, his mother a daughter of a miller coming from the Pilsen region. During WW II he had to serve as an auxiliary worker and in 1945 witnessed the liberation of Prague. In 1950 he graduated from law, becoming a Juris Doctor. He refused to join the Communist Party on the grounds of his faith in God. For that reason, he was referred to as ‘religious fanatic‘ in his assessment file. He underwent military service with the Auxiliary Technical Battalions and then worked in Ostrava‘s mines. When in the 1960s an opportunity came up for him to work as a company lawyer, he was eventually turned down because of his 1950s assessment. He worked in blue-collar jobs, attending an evening school of civil engineering and taking up the job of a standard-setter in the Institute for the Rationalization of Civil Engineering. He was never allowed to make use of his legal education.
