“Once I walked on a sidewalk and heard a conversation behind me. It was a mother and her daughter walking a few steps behind me. The mother was teaching her daughter how to pronounce the word ice cream. Well, the mother had obvious difficulties pronouncing the word. This girl once came to me and said: ´We’re now reading ‘Babička’ (‘Grandmother’ – a notorious Czech book by Božena Němcová – note by the translator) as part of our compulsory readings…´ This girl spoke already sound Czech. ´… and it reads that the Grandmother always had some sweets for the kids in her pocket. I looked in the dictionary and found that a pocket means pickpocket.´ So how was she supposed to understand it?”
“Well, I have to say that as mine workers we got quite a lot of food. We could have almost as much of bread as we wanted. We weren’t allowed to waste it but we had a lot of bread. I think the daily ration was something like three quarters of a kilo. We were keeping it under the table on planks.”
“So there was enough food in the mines?”
“Yes, we had reasonably enough of food. We weren’t starving there. Besides bread we had coffee in the morning – white on Sunday and black on the remaining days. It was mainly the bread, however, everybody could cut off as many slices of bread as he wanted. They had to adhere to some international norms that said that if someone worked in the mines he had to be fed rich meals. Now I’m talking about the labor camp, not about the prison, because the prison was terrible. The food in the camp was o.k., I can’t complain that we were starving.”
“I had an infectious jaundice and an inflammation of the renal pelvis. When I came to the labor camp the warmest clothes had already been distributed and I was given only a light rain coat. We weren’t allowed to wear socks. They didn’t tell us why, it was simply ordered and orders had to be obeyed. So I only had some rags wrapped around my feet and some shabby boots. In these clothes I was working outside when it got very cold. In the year 1956 the winter got very cold and I was fully exposed to it in these shabby clothes. It got as cold as minus 32 degrees Celsius.”
“What about the prison warders that were guarding you? What kind of people were they?”
“What kind of people they were? Well, we don’t know who they were. I can’t really say that they were some kind of sadists or the like. It’s also fair to say that some of them were making distinctions between prisoners – they knew that the intellectuals are no criminals. But some of the warders were worker cadres that were recruited in the army and taken to the prisons. They knew that as prison guards they’d make good money. So they were earning much more in the prison.”
“So during your term you didn’t experience any cruel mishandling or torture of the prisoners? It probably changed a lot after Gottwald’s death, right?”
“Yes. In the fifties it was really nasty. What I saw wasn’t as bad as that. But you know we had to stay alerted at all times because we didn’t know the warders.”
“Zapotocký became president in the summer and he simply ordered the Secret State Police officers to scale back the violence in the interrogations. Before they were knocking out teeth and the like but after his order they converted to more subtle methods. When they were interrogating me they already used these subtle, more refined methods of psychical persuasion. They aimed at bringing you down mentally. To confuse you so you’d eventually tell them what they wanted to hear. In the end you say things like ‘I didn’t want it’ and the like. It lasted from February till May. Then they gave me a break. It looked like the interrogations were over. But it all started anew in July! Interrogations over and over again. It was a trick! They wanted to confuse me. By July I had already forgotten what I had told them in the spring. In this way they could compare my testimonies. They continued till September and then came the trial. The trial was in November 1954.”
“What about the infamous ‘corrections’?”
“Yes, they used the correction, it was such an ugly house, more like a bunker, I saw it, but luckily they didn’t put me on correction. It was made of concrete, a tiny room with nothing in there, not even a bench. It was wet with water trickling in from all sides and corners. The ceiling was very low so you couldn’t stand there. They would keep people under these conditions for as many as five days. They gave them food every once a day or even once in three days! It was a bunker. The “normal” correction, however, was in a wooden shack nearby the headquarters. It was a sort of a cabin outside of the camp. I thing they were serving halved rations there.”
Jiří Laube was born on January 19, 1923, in the village of Klapý in the vicinity of Hazmburk. Both of his parents - Robert Laube and Emilie Laube (née Nedělková) were taking care of their house, farmstead and livestock. In June 1942, Jiří Laube passed his school-leaving exam on a grammar school. The exam was composed of, among other things, French and German. Studying languages has been one of the greatest interests of Mr. Laube through all of his life. During that, he attended a Spanish course, for instance. Right after the war, Mr. Laube got married and moved to Ústí nad Labem where he worked at the employment office as he had done before in Libochovice during the war. Being a member of the People‘s Party of Czechoslovakia he attended party rallies in Ústí nad Labem. This proved to be fateful for him. In February 1954, he and other four members of the People‘s Party were arrested and put in detention arrest in the Litoměřice prison. They were subjected to harsh interrogations that lasted well into November whereupon they were put on trial. The sentences were high - Jiří Laube was sentenced to life imprisonment and the others received prison terms of 15 to 25 years. They all gave a notice of appeal but the court of appeal confirmed the sentences. Mr. Laube spent the first part of his prison term in Pankrác prison. The imprisonment resulted in several serious health problems - he suffered from jaundice, had a surgery of his varicose veins and had an inflammation of his renal pelvis. After his treatment and recovery he was placed in the „Vojna“ (war or military service) mines in Příbram. In that time, the Communist regime abolished all life imprisonment and his prison term was changed to 25 years. In 1958, his term was further reduced to 15 years. His wife, Marie was sentenced to 3 years in prison and actually imprisoned for 14 months for not having reported her husband‘s attendance at the party meetings. After the general amnesty of 1960, Mr. Laube was released from prison. He thereafter worked manually - first in the paper mill in Štětí and then as a construction worker in Roudnice nad Labem. Because he was only rehabilitated in 1990 he was hindered in finding a qualified job where he could put to use his exceptional linguistic skills. He retired in 1983. Languages remained his hobby to this day. He was especially interested in the Esperanto. He also had an interest in history, philosophy and social sciences. Jiří Laube died on 18 September 2009.
