Motion Is the Basic Law of Creation

Zdeněk Křivka was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his activities in an anticommunist resistance group. He successively passed through seven labor camps in the Jáchymov area, including the worst one called Barbora, where he was imprisoned for two and a half years beginning in November 1952. There, the guard named Kulhánek became his nightmare. “I remember my time in the Barbora camp the most, because of the screw Kulhánek. I did not watch my mouth, and Kulhánek somehow got the wind of it. One day during the afternoon shift, two guards told me that I should follow them. I realized that something was wrong. They took me to the camp, to the headquarters barrack. There they stripped me naked and left me standing in the hall for about an hour. The temperature was around four or five degrees centigrade. Finally, Kulhánek appeared in the door of one of the offices, told me to get dressed and go in. At first he just shouted at me, but then he ordered me to change clothes. I was still in my working dress. At that moment I realized that I was heading to a coercion unit,” Křivka recalled. Kulhánek punished Křivka repeatedly by placing him into the coercion unit. Located in the mountain area with freezing temperatures, this meant life threatening conditions. The coercion unit comprised a concrete building with three cells, inside of which hung wooden plank beds without mattresses. “I had been there before and I knew that it was going to be really cold in there, so I decided to take my towel. That was forbidden of course. When Kulhánek called me and saw the towel, he roared as a bull, caught me by the towel and started to drag me around the room. Then he repeatedly smashed my head against the wall. Finally, he locked me up in that hole where I spent about a week. It was minus 25 or 30 degrees centigrade outside, and, naturally, there was no heating in the coercion cell. Through a small window snow fell in. These were really life threatening conditions. You have to do everything to keep moving. Motion is the basic law of creation,” remembered Křivka.