Miroslav Wildung

“I was working under them. I had a vegetables and fruits shop. I went to Moravia. I lived in Zlín and two guys from there wanted to get away. I didn’t go there but my car was going to Mikulov. In those days, there was no barbed wire at the border. If you drove out there you could go through the corn field to Austria. But the Russian army was stationed in Austria and they caught them there. Not just them, they got many more there. They beat it out of them – they forced them to make a false confession. They said I knew about it although I wasn’t even there. That’s how I was sentenced to nine months. I spent my term in Mikulov in a stone pit and then returned home. After that I was sentenced to forced labor in the TNP for a second time (forced-labor camp).”

“When we lined-up they counted us. I wasn’t there at the time but I know from hearsay that nobody wanted to stand in the first row. It was because one of the warders would beat those in the first row deliberately with his heavy bundle of keys. They called him ‘Paleček’ (Albín Dvořák), he was the officer in charge in Jáchymov. Nobody would stand in the first row. During my term there, there was an acquaintance of mine, a guy from Znojmo. He was a teamster. I knew him because I had worked with him before. One day, he came to the line-up in his slippers. The warder sent him to the correction and after two hours, he was dead. Požár from Znojmo.”

“I saw a deadly accident pretty early on in the mine. It happened to a guy who helped people flee across the border. He was a tall sports man. Originally, he was a carpenter by profession. He was constructing chimneys, struts and these kinds of things. He was sort of a boy scout. ‘Boys, I don’t want to go today’. He was buried by a boulder. As long as he was buried underneath it, he spoke to us. As soon as we finally managed to lift it up with cranes, he was gone.”