"I was in Jáchymov for about ten months, and then we were transferred - not only me, but a whole group of others - to Příbram to the Vojna camp. I mean, I would not wish that moment on anyone. Imagine, we arrived there sometime between one and two o'clock and between at 12:00 a.m. 600 German war prisoners left there, leaving the camp we entered. You cannot imagine such filth, filth and dirt. Mattresses dug up, blankets torn in it, dirt. Oh, it was horrible! Moreover, we had to line up right away. Fortunately, I was tiny, so I was only at the end, which saved me a little. And, now there were counsellors, as we called them. They went and picked. They touched people's muscles, looked into their mouths to see if they have healthy teeth. And their motto was: 'Okay, he's going into the shaft.' And we, who were so tiny, physically weaker, stayed to work on the surface. I got to the carts that were loaded by the excavator and driven to the sump where it was dumped and from there it went by conveyor to the ore treatment plant in the Elias mine."
"Today, I would think of it as a bit hasty. Back then, it was more or less a symbol of anti-communist activity. There were four of us in total and two more, who were outside, who got together and started writing the news as broadcast by the individual radio stations. As I had a perfect command of German at the time, I caught German news, translated them into Czech, and we reproduced them using a typewriter. This was not only my job, it was also the work of the others, who in turn tuned to for example “London calling” and so on. From this we made such summaries, we wrote, let us say, from each report, not every day, of course, we wrote about 15 to 20 letters. And we carried these and put them in the communists' mailboxes."
"I'll tell you something. When they arrested me, they took me to the police station in Budějovice, there the policeman slapped me and took me to a cell. There were already two lying on a wooden bed, nothing more, just bare boards. They were wrapped in a carpet. I I got there, greeted them, looked in the corner, and there I saw another pile of carpets. I threw it on the rug and stretched out. The policeman was standing there looking solemn like an antique pillar, looking at me and saying: 'How many times have you been locked up?' I said: 'First time now, so what?' You know, I have never worried about anything, not even transferring worries into the future. Once it happened, somehow it ended, I get rid of it. But to worry about it, no way. And it's possible that despite all the vicissitudes I've had in my life, I managed to get over it easily."
Otto Wagner was born on June 2, 1929 in Tábor, where he spent his childhood, attended elementary school and then secondary school. On March 29, 1949, he was taken away by State Security and sentenced to two years of hard labor in Jáchymov, later he was transferred to a camp in Příbram. Together with other members of the group, they listened to foreign radio, transcribed the broadcast messages and threw them into the communists‘ mailboxes. He was released after 25 months, as he had to serve another 30 days of his sentence for non-payment of a fine. He tried several times to return to school, but was unsuccessful due to his political beliefs. His life is connected with Scouting, he joined the troop as a child in 1945. His love for the Scout lasted until his death on January 7, 2021.
