He managed to get a piece of bread for whomever was hungry

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Ivan Malý arrived at the Pankrác prison shortly after his arrest in August 1944. From there, they took him to interrogations taking place in the Petschek Palace: “There were thirty of us in the cell, some really interesting cases. Most of them got there for economic crimes. For example there was a guy there for killing a pig. Or there was this guy who managed to obtain ration cards for thirty people. He had a clever approach.” The man in question was called Pavelka and he had a genuinely sophisticated system of obtaining ration cards: “He made up a story that he needed them for a group of people working in the Škoda factory in Prague. He forged baptism certificates and other documents, he even had parish office stamps made. He really knew his stuff.” Pavelka used his ability to obtain food also in the Pankrác prison. He was in charge of the cell, which Mr Malý shared with the rest of the prisoners: “He knew the situation of each and every one of us, and if somebody was really hungry, he managed to get a piece of bread for them.” At a time, when the prisoners received only a small loaf of bread, apart from some daily hogwash, it was a real help,” recalled Ivan Malý.

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Ivan Malý

Ivan Malý was born on the 13th of October 1922 in Dobřany near Pilsen, into a Catholic family. He was a single child. His father, head of the Asylum for the Mentally Ill in Dobřany, (later they moved to the Bohnice asylum in Prague), taught him respect for his country and for human life. Malý remembers his childhood summers in Dobřany, where there was a sizeable German minority that the Czechs considered to be enemies. The Czech and German children warred with each other, Ivan's gang used to break the windows of German shops. In 1940 Malý joined an anti-Nazi youth group in Bohnice. They helped people that were called to "slave work" in Germany. The anti-Nazi hid a paratrooper from SSSR, Rudolf Vetišek. Malý produced potassium cyanide for the resistance. Vetiška was discovered and with him the whole group. Ivan Malý was tortured in the infamous Petschkov palace. He was held in an interrogation cell in Pankrác for several months, until being released towards the end of 1944. After the war, Communist Ivan Malý started working as an army medic in the Military Hospital in Prague 6. He did not take much notice of the political trials of the Fifties. He considered the executions of Milada Horáková, Heliodor Píka and others to be correct, as he believed that the convicted persons were "evil imperialist spies." He agreed with the intervention of the armies of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968. He accepted everything his superiors told him. After 1989 he left the KSČ, (Czech Communist Party), and, as he claims, has come to see things clearly.

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Pankrác

Available in: English | Česky

During the First Czechoslovak Republic they executed people here on the gallows. The number of the casualties cannot be even compared with the period of Nazi occupation. Between 1943 and 1945 they executed over a thousand of people, including women, by guillotine in the so-called “axe room.” After the war there were public executions of Nazi criminals and collaborators. The executions continued during the communist period and since 1954, Pankrác prison was the only place of executions in Czechoslovakia. The last death penalty was executed in February 1989. The total number of the executed was 1580.