The Escape of Zdeněk Otruba

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Eduard Mine is less than a kilometer away from Nikolai Camp. The civilians and guards working there used to come for their shifts either by bus or through a small gate by the forest. That way, they did not have to walk all the way around the fence of the camp. Jiří Málek, standing by the former parking lot for buses, recalls how his classmate and accomplice Zdeněk Otruba made use of the open gate and fled: “Shortly before that, he got a letter from his girlfriend saying that she wanted to break up with him, because she did not want to wait any longer. He went of his rocker, so to say, and simply ran through the gate and fled. Many publications describe, how his escape was accompanied by machine gun fire, but that’s not true. He ran away, but on the third day he was on his last legs – he was hungry, dressed only in sweatpants. In Chomutov he got so desperate that he went to the train station and attempted to leave by train. But a police man noticed him and since he didn’t have any ID card, he got arrested. Otruba later told me: ‘The police men didn’t even handcuff me, they saw how whacked I was.”

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Jiří Málek

Jiří Málek was born on 21 August, 1930, in Prague. After the family moved to Říčany, he commuted to Prague to grammar school. After the war, he became an active member of the National Socialist youth. Simultaneously, he studied at the pedagogical and the philosophical faculty. After February 1948, he got involved in intelligence activities for a resistance group called "Barrandov" which was connected to the exiled leadership of the National Socialist Party. On 30 April, 1952, he was arrested by the State Security, sentenced to 11 years and sent to a forced-labor camp in Jáchymov and later to camps in Nikolai and Equality. In Jáchymov, he also went through the central camp C Vykmanov and later, along with other inmates, he was transported on a bus to various other workplaces in the Slavkovsko area. In 1960, he was conditionally released in the wake of an amnesty, but in the spring of 1962, he was arrested again and as a "recidivist" sent to prison in Leopoldov. He was finally released in 1965. Following his release, he managed to complete his studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, where he worked as an assistant. He later worked at the Research Institute of Geodesy and Cartography. After 1989, he worked in the Office of Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism.

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Jáchymov, Eduard mine

Available in: English | Česky

The inmates walked the distance from the Nikolaj camp to the Eduard mine, which was less than a mile, tied to each other with a rope (this was called the "Jáchymov bus"). Then they descended a set of stairs into the mine. The engine room and the headframe were located right underneath the staircase. The waste rock wasn't brought to the surface in carts anymore, but via skip mining. The workday was divided into three shifts, the morning shift being the longest and lasting from six in the morning to two o'clock. Today we can see here the two support blocks of steel-reinforced concrete, which propped up the headframe against the pull ropes, or the place where the offices and the infirmary used to be.

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The Escape of Zdeněk Otruba

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