The minecart just flew past

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Rovnost was the last camp, in the list of all the ones, where Jan Haluza had served his sentence. He worked in a mine there: “I had to pull the minecart, which was used to carry uranium ore, three or four kilometers up a small hill to the place of excavations. That is where the minecart was loaded which we then took down. That was called running off. We had iron pipes which we would put between the wheels to slow down the minecarts.” Oftentimes, the overloaded minecarts were set loose. “Once, someone started to yell that a minecart was set loose, so we immediately jumped away and looked for a place to hide. I was at a quite a good spot, but my friend had nowhere to hide,” he remembered. The terrifying situation, eventually, did not end in tragedy, as “the minecart flew past him and did nothing to him.”

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Jan Haluza

Jan Haluza was born on 12th July 1914 in Šternov, today's Újezd u Brna. From his early youth, he did sports and soon became an outstanding athlete. He brought medals from Catholic Olympics in Vienna and Ljubljana and he won many titles and achieved many records. He was a member of the Baťa Athletic club in Zlín, where he met Emil Zátopek, for whom he became the first and only trainer. After the February 1948, he was offered membership by the Communist Party, which he refused. He was arrested, accused of plotting against the government and sentenced to six years in prison. Then he was accused of being a member of the group connected with Milada Horáková and he went through electricity torture in Uherské Hradiště. The interrogation in Uherské Hradiště finally did not bring any new information. Apart from several prisons, he passed through camps Vykmanov, Eliáš, Mariánská. In the Bratrství camp, he was accused of espionage and was threatened danger by execution. During the interrogation he fell ill with typhus and after 22 days of hallucinations he lost his memory. After the release in 1954, he worked in inferior positions until he could return to his law practice. After the Revolution, he was honored with many decorations including the golden medal for an honest run in the race of life.

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Rovnost

Available in: English | Česky

The camp was established after the Second World War to keep prisoners of war there. In September 1949 it was transferred under the management of the Prison Guard Corps. Political and retributive prisoners and criminals worked at the mine Rovnost, (Equality); each day on their way to work, they had to pass a corridor surrounded by barbed wire. The mineshaft was over 660 meters deep and it was the deepest one in the region of Jáchymov. The infamous František Paleček was in charge of the mine Rovnost, who tortured the prisoners with sadistic methods, for example, by making them stand in knee-high snow for long periods of time.