Stanislav Vobejda

Interviewer: “What would be your message, what do you consider important? – “People should know that all evil causes evil. And that whatever comes from the East has never been worth a penny…”

“If I had believed I would serve the entire sentence, I would have hanged myself. Because this was slow dying. But we trusted in one thing: that it could not last. If not soon, then within a certain time, it had to collapse. And it did. You see, these Hitler’s talks about the one-thousand years rule, and the Bolsheviks who claimed to be here for time eternal. And now you see it has all collapsed.”

Interviewer: “What was it like when you came there?” - “Tough, it was tough. It was bad. They brought us there and placed us on the third floor. The cell was designed for two people, but there were six or eight of us, I don’t remember. The ward’s commander was Šepík. It was in January, and the window was broken. We were working on stripping feathers....Nearly frozen to death, because it was in January. It was manageable during the day, but at nights… We were supposed to have clothes – well, you can’t call it clothes! A shirt, underwear, trousers, something which looked like a bad coat. We were supposed to keep our clothes neatly folded. And since we didn’t, Šepík woke us up at night and ordered: ´Take all your clothes off and stand by the wall till the morning.´ In this cold weather. And why? Because we had put the clothes on, which was interpreted as preparation for escape. But we were on the third floor, in Bory, there was nothing around there! A broken window. And we only had shoelaces and a belt... He was an evil man, he was from Ukraine, and he was a real beast!”

“There were three types of food stamps. If you didn’t complete the work standard of hundred percent, you got a green stamp. The standard ration was four dumplings and some sauce to go with it – that was a meal for a miner! It was for surviving, but not for a man to fill twelve wagons a day – to throw the stuff in, etc. If you didn’t meet this standard, you got a green stamp, and if you worked even less, then they put you into a bunker or a corrective cell. And there you got only two dumplings. It was barely enough to survive, you couldn’t go on like that. Were it not for the guys...if the warden, or the one distributing food, didn’t secretly give you more from time to time, then you pegged out.”