Jan Šefl

“And then they assigned me to work at a German submarine base. At first I worked outside. I never saw such a job before. Our group of about eight people was trained to work in a caisson. That was an iron dome with a diameter of 10 by 12 metres. We’d climb into it via the top using a ladder, and they sent compressed air there. We had to do like this [pull our auricles - ed.] so they could put the air in there. Twenty-three metres. That meant that the water had to be pushed out by pressure. Because those were caissons, that’s what it’s called. A caisson. And it sank because of its weight. But there was water under it. And we had to take the water out that was underneath it, seashells and all, and we sent it out via the chimney [muck tube - trans.]. That was a kind of chimney. We sent it up through the chimney. But also, one time what I experienced, when they pulled it up through the chimney, and then the chimney was dropped, it fell down, and the pressure, seeing that the boy was right beside it, it tore his lungs apart. Ripped his lungs up. The pressure became... and he was down there. We were give leave for that. As Czechs, we got time off because of it.”

“I didn’t go down into the caisson. And then it was why. There were seven of us there. And they said: ‘Hey, where were you?’ And when we went up, I slipped in among the boys and even got a receipt. I didn’t have any foreman’s confirmation, but I got it. The second time I did it again, and the third time three or four people did it, and it was half empty. And there was an investigation, it was terrible. One boy came out from there and said: ‘Man, big trouble.’ I did it as well, so did this other chap. There were three or four of us who’d done it. And he said: ‘Man, they say they’ll lock us up.’ One boy named Hajník was locked up because of it. And when I saw that, I went to get Dolmetsch [an interpreter - ed.], one of the boys, a Czech boy who spoke German as well, and I told him: ‘Look, I skipped work. We have to say I was ill, that I had to leave, that the foreman wasn’t there at the time...’ That he’d swum up. They pulled the foreman out in those fifteen minutes. And they left us there, of course. ‘...and that I’d come out, that I was sick, and that I hadn’t returned after that.’ And they kept talking about it there, he explained the situation, and the German kept refusing, refusing, until at last he threw the confirmed ticket and said: ‘Raus!’ At me, at us, meaning, out! So I didn’t end up in the cooler, but the other boy, Hajník, he did. And do you know what kind of punishment they had for when you skipped work? A small cabin, concrete, concrete everywhere, and holes at the bottom. And water’d come it at various intervals. He was there for a week. Or ten days perhaps. The water flowed, he was exhausted, so he sat down, then the water flowed again. So he got up, but then he even slept in the water. It flowed beneath him. He said: ‘I wouldn’t do that again, it was a horror.’ He had to survive on bread and water.”