Fifty-six hours in minus thirty degrees Celsius

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Štěpán Vašíček was spent almost a year in Camp Rovnost, (Equality): “The commander at the time was Paleček, real name Albín Dvořák. I was to receive a visit for the first time in three years, my mum and godmother were supposed to come to see me. Before that happened, Paleček called out for me and some five others and told us: ‘You’re not getting a visit because you deserve it but because your parents asked for it.’ And the visit proceeded accordingly. Mum cried, so I told her: ‘Don’t cry, be glad that we have the opportunity to offer this up in love to God, not only for ourselves, our sins, but for the whole nation.’ And of course in the next moment I had, I think, eight warders around me. Mum protested: ‘But they told us you weren’t willing to listen, that they could release you otherwise.’ I replied: ‘Don’t trust them, they’re lying to you.’ And I used the words of St Thomas More, who told his wife from his prison cell: ‘Yes, they would release me, but I would have to agree with everything the king wants.’ Just as I would have had to agree with the things the communists wanted from me. More apparently added: ‘How long would I live with you? A year, two, five, ten, or twenty... And for those twenty years I should lose all eternity?’ They ended the visit immediately after those words. Paleček came to me and said: ‘Vašíček, I have the feeling you want to end up on the gallows.’ When we came back to the camp, he did not let me in. I had to change into prison clothes and stand in the snow. There was no solitary confinement there. I stood with the snow up to my waist together with some five Slovak friends for 56 hours. At the time it was a freezing minus thirty degrees Celsius. Three days later with the help of friends from electro, I got myself to the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Karlovy Vary. We drew up an official report about all that was going on at Rovnost, and the warders later received a right seeing-to. When they were taking me back to Rovnost, the escort guard told me: ‘Vašíček, I’d like to just lead you into a forest and come back alone.’ ”

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Štěpán Vašíček

Štěpán Vašíček was born December 21st, 1927 in Vnorovy in the Hodonín district. He studied to become an electro-technician, and in 1949 he began contemplating escape from the country. He eventually decided not to carry out this idea and was drafted to the army to the tank unit in Vyškov, albeit with the "politically untrustworthy" reference from the municipal office. While in the army, during a political lecture he voiced disagreement with the communist assertion that the so-called Číhošť miracle, when the congregation saw a cross moving on the altar, was merely the priest Toufar´s artifice, accomplished by pulling on wires concealed in the altar. On May 12, 1950, Vašíček was imprisoned in the Masaryk barracks in Brno. He was accused of delivering parts for a radio transmitter assembly to the spies, which was an accusation concocted by the State police. The state tribunal in Brno sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment for high treason. In the detention facility in Cejl in Brno, a guard broke two of his ribs when ripping the chain with a cross that Vašíček was wearing around his neck. Then he experienced prisons in Mírov, later "correction" cells in Ostrava and the Bory prison. Thanks to his vocational training, he was mostly assigned to electro workshops in all the camps, and thus avoided work in the uranium mines. In the Jáchymov camp Bratrství, the commander Paleček made him stand in - 30°C freeze for 56 hours, in snow reaching up to his waist. In the Bytíz camp, Vašíček assisted the escape of some prisoners, and wrote a letter of complaint about his treatment in the "correction" cell. He experienced this type of punishment especially in the Vojna camp. On May 12th, 1960, while in prison in Leopoldov, he was finally released. Today he is a member of the Confederation of Political prisoners and he participates in discussions with former political prisoners.

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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.