Milan Sehnal

“I was no pansy, but it’s nothing pleasant. I wouldn’t be surprised if a person went crazy. On the other hand, you have to find some kind of... I wouldn’t say amusement, but timefiller... you have to count steps, for instance, or keep repeating various texts or poems. And of course, make note of every sound, every movement, and anticipate everything. Because when they put the food in, they just opened the door and nudged it in with a foot. No putting it in your hands or opening the hatch. It’s complete isolation. And in Ruzyně, if you wanted water... it was in the pipes - a piece of pipe stuck out of the wall, you had to bang on the door and say, ‘commander, sir, give me water’. You had a kind of paper cup. Otherwise they’d close out the couch, close out the table. Whenever the commander said ‘close out’, they’d close out your chair and you had to walk the whole day.”

"In Leopoldov, I ended up in solitary confinement where I finally spent four and a half years. The other prisoners were put into shared cells. In the meantime, my mother died. Of course, they didn't let me know. I only learned about it seven months later. Before she died, she filed a request for my release. I still have that letter somewhere. After her death, an answer came. It read: 'Your son can never be released from prison because he committed dangerous offences against the Czechoslovak Republic and during the time he has spent in prison he hasn't demonstrated any sign of correction and kept to his bourgeois beliefs'. It was the usual nonsense. I was released from prison in 1960. Half a year earlier it would be unthinkable and all of a sudden I was free and could go home."

“It was even worse in the old camps, such as Vojna or Mariánská, there were bedbugs there. Camp 12 was new, so it was built from new houses, but the system was the same. The wooden buildings were split into rooms, and each of them had 18-20 beds. They were set up on both sides, there was a table in the middle with benches around it. Twenty mafdos [an approximation of the Czech ‘mukl’, an acronym meaning ‘man designated for disposal’ - trans.] lived there. And there were twelve work teams. Each room had its leader, who had to report where everyone was to the guards when they checked by. Basically, they were two-bed rooms with five beds on each side, each being doubled. So that makes twenty people. As for stoves, if you were allowed to heat in the winter, you got a jam bucket. If heating was allowed, the stove had to be completely cold at eight p.m., so it was always chilly. People stole wood from the stays, but because the guard came to check on time, [the fire in the stove] had to be extinguished. And if they caught someone with some wood, they could end up in the cooler. Practically no space. People slept in twos and simply took turns in the room - one group did mornings, one did afternoons, and one did nights. There was always something going on, so the ones who were sleeping often didn’t get any proper sleep. When you dropped down on the bed, you were happy to sleep. Things were relatively better in the camps seeing that you could see the sky and would at least have a short moment for yourself. Because comfort and time and rest - that was severely lacking. Because, like I said, you went to work, then after work they immediately rang for extra labour. The guards made the rounds of the houses, and if you were supposed to be doing extra labour and you weren’t, you went into the cooler again. This kind of bullying went on from morning till night.”

"It began like this – my colleague was being investigated and it appeared very likely that something would happen. They began interrogating the people who had been in the Scout, like, for instance, Vysloužil. He was interrogated by the State security – they asked if he wasn't hiding weapons, about his contacts and things like that. After this investigation began, we knew that there was no point in staying home and we decided to get away from Czechoslovakia and join the army abroad. We managed to break out but not in the way we had originally planned. On our way, we broke up and lost each other in the Russian zone. Whereas I got to Munich he stayed in the French zone and went I don't know where. I haven't seen him since. I simply ended up in Munich."

“First of all, they immediately sent us home from school. [The soldiers] were coming to Olomouc. Like I already said, the inhabitants of Olomouc were split in thirds - one third Czechs, one third Germans, and about one third Jews. At the time there were about 50,000 people living in Olomouc. As soon as the Wehrmacht arrived in Olomouc, they immediately set up cauldrons in the square, they cooked Eintopf there, and the German citizens stood in line as if they were giving out goodness knows what. They built up a kind of firing position, against planes... they hung up some lines and shot at that. The Germans welcomed the Wehrmacht... very much in Olomouc... with right hands raised, shouting Heil.”

"In Jáchymov, I was located in the Mariánská camp. By the end of February, beginning of March, we agreed that we'd try to escape and at the same time undertake sabotage. We tried to set a shack on fire together with Václav Řehák and Oliver Staňkovský, who was Slovak. A cable was leading through this shack to the extraction tower. We tried to send down a cart to break through the fence. Unfortunately, it didn't work out and we were caught. We were put in the cloister. I think that the cloister was even worse than Ruzyně, where I also spent some time. Then I was placed in the so-called 'correction' for three months and afterwards we were tried and sentenced to ten and a half years and three years and sent back to Bory."

"Then they took us from camp Nr. 12 to the Vojna camp where I stayed till 1955. There was a 'board of honor' and a 'board of shame' placed in the shaft. They were black and red. On the U.S. national holiday, we posted an American flag on the boar of honor and a photograph of Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands on the board of shame. We found that American flag in a balloon. It was the so-called 'balloon operation'. Balloons were flying in the air and they contained chewing gum and little American flags. Václav Řehák was working above ground and found one of them. The flag was made of paper and it was about this size. That was the reason why they gave it to us afterwards. There was a group of people numbering about ten people that we cooperated with. We all went to the court later on. One of the co-founders of K 231 in 1968, Zdeněk Mráz, was there, as well as Jaroslav Brodský and general Procházka (Radovan Procházka), who had been a lieutenant before. We were eleven and had a double wall to hide illegal magazines, books, textbooks and so on. We were then accused and sentenced for having created an illegal group aiming at the incitement of unrests. This was supposed to back the activities of the foreign intelligence services. I got the highest sentence, 13 years in prison. Together with Svárovský, I was additionally sentenced for sabotage. Procházka was sentenced to 11 years and Zdeněk Mráz 11 as well. Svárovský got 12 years I think."

"I was a Scout cup since 1937 and my first encounter with the German totalitarian regime was in 1939. It was in the autumn. We lived in Kateřinská Street and we would play football outside on the playground. We used to wear these Scout badges all the time and once a Gestapo guy came and caught me and my brother wearing them. He cut through the badges with his wife and took us to the Gestapo station that was located in the same building where you have the hospital today. They sent somebody for my mom who had to come to the station. When she entered the office the Gestapo men threw the cut-off badges to her feet and told her in German (she spoke German as she used to live in Vienna) to take them away or she will end up in a concentration camp. So that was my first encounter. My mom was hiding the badges throughout the war and gave them back to us afterwards. I donated my badge to the Scout museum recently."

"When we had the trouble they took us away from the shaft and took us to the camp. They ordered us to stand in a place that was surrounded by barbed wire. It was a strip that was some three or four meters wide and was tightly guarded by snipers. They put us into that corridor and the sniper was ordered to shoot us should we move an inch. We stood there motionlessly till the morning when they came for us and took us to the cloister. Before we entered it, they blindfolded us and upon our entry they handcuffed us and tied us to a bar. I spent some 48 hours there before they came to pick me up again. Václav Řehák, who then confessed that he planned to cross the border, allegedly spent five or six days there. After you spend a couple of hours there, you get disoriented. You're cold, frozen and hungry since you don't get any food. They give you nothing. You're wet because eventually you pee yourself. The guards occasionally come to check you and their dogs barked at us – you could feel that they let them come very close to you. It was a terrible time, very stressful. I think it was one of the worst prisons that existed."

"At that time, the frontier truly wasn't so much tightly guarded. But we had an acquaintance who knew someone in Šatov. This guy helped us to get via Šatov and Znojmo to the Russian zone and via Retz and then on foot all the way to Hollabrunn and from Hollabrunn, we wanted to leave on a train. A military patrol came and I got out of the train on one side, he got out on the other side of the train and since then, I have never seen him again. I managed to make it through the Russian zone to Steyr with the help of one peasant. From Steyr, one family helped me – they gave me some money to get to Lienz. That was already in the American zone – behind the river Enns. From Lienz, I went to Salzburg and from there on foot across the border to Germany, to Bad Reichenhall. I was transferred from Reichenhall to Grenzwache and handed over to the American military police that transported me to Munich where I was handed over to the International Refugee Organization (IRO) and the CIC. I was subjected to a screening by the Americans and I was declared a political prisoner and given a DP ID card, 'displaced person'. Then I was also interrogated by the CIC."