Up to my knees in shit

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In October 1953, they arrested Rudolf Mrázek for being part of the resistance group SODAN, and took him to the State Security prison on Příční Street, Brno. He was nineteen years old at the time ,and he remembers how his life turned on end in a single moment. “It was very rough the first few days following the arrest. I had a busy life, two loves I was dating, football, theatre; I lived a merry student’s life. Suddenly I was torn from that and thrown into a hole. There was a secret police station on the corner of Příční and Bratislavská Street, and it had terribly deep cellars. At least eight meters. It was awful. Those were the worst days of my life. Coming to terms with the fact that the life I knew was gone... The investigation was all scaremongering: ‘This’ll be the gallows. You’re saboteurs, you wanted to wipe out the whole nation.’ ” The prisoners inside the prison at Příční Street suffered in the disastrous cellar environment. “The cellars were located even lower than the city sewers, the River Ponávka, and the septic tank. The Ponávka flooded over into the city sewers, leaked through into the septic and then spilled out from the squat toilets and into the cells. The cells were full of the filth for two days, and we were living in it. When the water subsided, we had to shovel the stuff out. We had to scrub the floor every day, but the straw mats were sodding wet with shit. I had a read of the newest newspapers – they came in with the rest. And then came all the creepy crawlies, the centipedes, the pill bugs,” Rudolf Mrázek remembers. He spent the next sixteen years in prison.

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Rudolf Mrázek

Rudolf Mrázek was born in 1934 in Břeclav. He comes from a democraticly-minded family, whose members participated in the resistance movement during the war. Rudolf's father died in April 1945 during the bombing of Brno. Rudolf Mrázek was an ardent Scout since his youth and he lived by the Scout principles. After the abolition of the Scout in 1950, he secretly continued in Scouting with his friends in Křenovice. They became aware of how the communist regime was forcing the peasants to join in the collectivization, and they spontaneously decided to rise against this injustice. They founded the resistance organization Sodano, an acronym standing for the "Scout organization of democracy and independence", and began to send threatening letters to communist officials. They also printed and distributed anti-regime leaflets. When this proved to be ineffective, they decided to carry out their threats and set hay stacks and barns belonging to the farms collective on fire. After several arson attacks, however, they got caught due to an informer. Rudolf Mrázek ended up in custody in Příčná Street, where he was subjected to a series of brutal interrogations. In 1954, he was sentenced to sixteen years. Altogether, he spent ten years, three months and nineteen days in prisons in Cejl, Pankrác, Leopoldov, and in prison forced-labor camps in the uranium mines Rovnost, Vojna, and Bytíz. Even after his release from prison, the StB would extort him and try to make him work with them. However, Rudolf Mrázek didn't yield. Today, he lives in Tišnov.

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Brno, KV prison of the State security (StB)

Available in: English | Česky

From 1948 until 1951, the building housed the regional headquarters of the StB. Since 1948, it also served as the prison of the StB with a capacity of 29 prisoners in 25 cells. In November 1952, the prison was shut down, and in June 1954 replaced by a pre-trial custody. The cells were located in the basement and throughout the existence of the prison, dozens of political prisoners were incarcerated here. Today the building houses the police department responsible for arms and police-forces equipment. A commemorative plaque has been placed on the building with the inscription: "To the political prisoners of the years 1948-1989".