Ján Brichta

“An ordinary day in Jáchymov. We worked in three shifts. Men from the morning shift had to get up at four, because at five they had to report to work and at six they stared working. Afternoon shift had to leave at one, because at two they had to be at their workplace, and the night shift’s leaving was at nine in the evening as they had to work at ten. It was a sort of rotation. One week I was in the morning shift, then, the next week I had a night shift and the third week I worked in an afternoon shift. Such circulation. And the shift always started at night from Sunday to Monday. It meant that the morning shift started immediately after the afternoon shift and afternoon shift after the night shift.” “You didn’t have a day off.” “We really had no day off. There, in the Dvanástka camp, there was no free time. We had a day off only in case of some accident in a mine as we couldn’t work at that time.”

“There was a problem. Two of us fell behind; they almost weren’t able to walk. Thus we caught them under the arm and walked slowly towards the borders, because we had to be there at about midnight or one in the morning. However, due to these inconveniences we managed to be there at about half past three or at four in the morning. We arrived three hours later. It was the first problem. When we came to the borders, we saw the dams and a lot of water. Level of the Morava River rose by about a meter due to the heavy rains and melting snow from the Jeseníky Mountains. We were about two hundred meters away from the main stream. There were willow trees lying on the ground and branches everywhere. It was impossible to inflate the boats. We were looking for a solution. I thought about what to do in a situation like this. One option was trying to ford a river to its main stream and then inflate the boat and go. The same situation had also occurred in October, though it hadn’t been so chilly and water hadn’t been so cold, moreover, there hadn’t been so much water everywhere. It was the first alternative. The old besought for return as they thought they wouldn’t survive it. Therefore, we were looking for another option. We decided to lie down, wait till the evening and then try it once again or return. We were still looking for certain solutions. In such a tense situation even a brain doesn’t work properly, I mean we didn’t ponder the way a sober person would do so. We were walking near the dam looking for the place with the smallest distance. However, we didn’t find it; there was about two-hundred-meter distance in each place. And due to those willow trees and branches, it was absolutely impossible to inflate the boats without rupturing them. It would be even a bigger disaster. In that uncertain situation that lasted for about three quarters of an hour or the like, it's hard to say, a dawn was about come. Thus we immediately decided. ‘We go back.’”

“There was a group around Slánsky. Suddenly, those men were brought there, the whole group of thirty-five or forty men. I will tell you more about the circumstances other time perhaps. The prisoners pounced on them and beat them helter-skelter. There were all the prosecutors and judges, who had judged, pursued, and investigated those prisoners. Suddenly, they found themselves among us. And the settlement of account started. Man to man. And they were ruthless, retaliated everything as it is said pretty harshly.”

“It was the easiest thing, when they saw a group of people, they raised the alarm. It was exactly what happened to us, the alarm was raised, rockets launched, and the chase started. Soldier, police officers, border guards, all the forces were there. They ringed the entire area and started arresting people. Then, they arrested fifteen out of twenty people. Seven managed to get to train. Tóno Hlinka, Botek, and so on. They managed to catch the train to Bratislava and get on it. As they were wearing rubber boots and were totally wet, people were staring at them. However, they succeeded and other groups did the same in autumn. Later, other groups used other ways to do the same.”

“On the one hand we can say that a modern era has no understanding for the events occurring forty, fifty years ago, but many people even don’t want to know about them. On the other hand I have to admit that this period raised or formed very strong personalities, who can also influence the present youth.”

“When I came to the room, I didn’t have a bench there anymore, so I had no place to sit. They left a wall-mounted table and a bed-mounted mattress there. The room was three by two metres, they took my chair and I only had a kind of Turkish toilet in the corner. It was all. They really took it. So then, I had to walk in the room from dawn to dusk and they said, ‘You are not allowed to lean against the wall and sit!’ Lights-out was at ten, so only then I could unfasten the mattress and lie. When I finally fell asleep, they switched the light on. ‘Get up! Ten squats!’ I got up and squatted ten times. ‘Go to bed!’ He switched the lights off, only a sort of poor light was hanging there. I fell asleep again. ‘Get up! Ten squats!’ And it was like that all over again until the morning. It meant from ten in the evening till five in the morning. I don’t know, thirteen or fifteen times the same. It meant they had a certain goal as they stepped up the pressure and disturbed our sleep. And then, a week later, I was called for an interrogation again. They asked me if I had already thought about everything and if I changed my mind. ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘Are you satisfied with your situation? With your life here?’ ‘And what can I do? I can’t change it.’ Thus it was in vain, they learnt nothing from me. I went back to my room. As soon as I came there, the water tank above the toilet started to make really strange sound like rrrr rrrr. Something had been installed there. At first I paid no attention to it and later I stopped my ears. It was still the same. They used a really intense mental pressure as they wanted to consternate me. It was much worse what they went after.”

“There was a given date - the end of October. I was in Libava and I wanted to get from there as soon as possible to catch the group leaving for Italy. Unfortunately, it took much longer in Libava and yet more than a week I had to be under the military surveillance. Suddenly they announced me I was released. So I caught the first train to Olomouc and through Brno to Bratislava, just to be there on time since the group, getting ready to leave for Italy was counting on me joining them. However, I arrived in Bratislava in the morning and yet the night before they were crossing the borders, so I missed them. Anyhow, later I spoke with my professors who were also secretly active and they said: ‘There is no other help; you will leave with another group. We shall see when will the group that left already come back and arrange everything needed. Maybe they’ll be here before Christmas.’”

“All fifteen of us were detained in Leváre and then in the evening they took us to the castle. There was the Border Guard Headquarters. They placed us there, we sat on the chairs, the lights were on and they guarded us. They also started the investigation. So there we spent two days and nights by sitting, without food, without anything, being starved out, exhausted, and weakened.”

“On Saturday afternoon, at about three or four o’clock, I went through gardens, along the side road to the train station. There I even met my brother who was returning from his daily work shift. I told him we were leaving. ‘You know what’s going on, please; take care of our parents…’ I gave him such brotherly advice that was needed to be said aloud and I added: ‘We will send a note when we get to the other side.’ Then I travelled to Šaštín, where were twenty of us waiting to cross the border.”

“When they placed me there, I was being investigated casually for about a week. Then, during the second week they started to be more detailed. I know I came to the cell, where wasn’t even a blanket or anything. I wondered what happened. In the evening I lay down on my foldaway bed and suddenly through the little window for handing the meals the guard shouted: ‘Squats! Ten, twenty squats and get to bed!’ In ten minutes he did it again and this way they tortured us till the morning. Considering that we were weakened, having poor meals, for breakfast just a little slops and half slice of bread. For lunch we neither had anything special – two slices of dumplings, very tiny and a little of some sauce. The dinner in the evening was very poor as well, some kind of wish-wash again, so our organism was very weak. I know that before I weighted 64 kilograms and after those three months I had only 48 kilos. One was there truly impoverished and weak.”

“There were two groups of us, students at Salesians. We gathered at Hercog family and about six priests were in Borský Mikuláš ready to leave, waiting there at the dean’s house. There was a warrant issued for their arrest, so they pleaded us to take them along. We said it was all right since the superiors agreed and that they could join our group. We got up, got ready, washed ourselves and set out with father Zeman. The others started their way from Búre (Borský Mikuláš) with Totka. I don’t know what the village was where we met in the forest, but it was already daybreak. Even though it was April, it was very cold and rainy. The weather was quite bad. It rained the whole day and it was really unpleasant. We only had such coats, not even umbrellas, so that we didn’t have many things to carry. Yet father Zeman served holy mass and then we spent the whole day hidden in those forests. Then in the evening, when it got dark we set out.”

“Suddenly they gave me the record to sign: ‘Follower of the clerofascist regime, which was about to go and study at Vatican universities, afterwards come back here and murder our women and children.’ I said: ‘Excuse me, but I cannot sign something like this and I won’t.’ That’s when they started to beat me and kick me; drag me on the floor until I fell unconscious. I don’t know what happened afterwards, I found myself in the cell, where they poured a bucket of water on me, as they couldn’t leave a prisoner unconscious. This was an international regulation. There I heard someone saying: ‘Drop dead, bastard! You won’t get out of here alive anyway!’”

“The thing was that it rained the whole day; it even rained few days before and thus the ground was muddy and there was a lot of water. The road we had to walk on was the only road from Malacky to Kúty. For several times border guards lighted by car searchlights and searched for some group. As soon as we saw a car, we had to lie down, even into that water, we had no other choice. This way we were really soaked. Moreover, when we crossed the road to the other side, towards the village Leváre, there were some puddles and the older priests started to faint. Therefore two and two of us, the young students, I remember it was Jožko Bazal, my older schoolmate with me back then, we took one priest under arms and said: ‘Father, just hold on! We are near the borders!’We were supposed to be in Malé Leváre at midnight and then at two or three o’clock in the morning we wanted to try to cross. However, we came there with two-hour delay. This was one thing, but the other thing was that the terrain was very dangerous because of water and mud. When we finally arrived there, father Zeman issued instructions to Totka to go through the embankment (if possible) to cross to the other side. We had a small inflatable dinghy, we were supposed to blow it and we were prepared to do so, but we were really slowed down by the older sirs, 60 or 70 years old who were so exhausted after going through the muddy terrain. We got up to the border, walking app. some hundred metres and looking for a place to cross with our guide Totka. Although on the other side, Morava was very swollen and everything was flooded. Even the trees were damaged, broken. We were afraid that if sailing in the dinghy, it could easily impale on the ends of fallen branches, this way it could blow out and that would be even worse. We, the younger ones, decided to cross, but the older men beseeched us: ‘Please, don’t go. We shall die here, that’s our end!’ And since compassion is compassion and life is life as well, we chose the option of going back.”

“There was a great hunger in the camp Nikolaj. There was a terrible hunger in all of the labour camps, because people didn’t get normal food. There were green, yellow and red vouchers. The red ones meant, a man had 100% meal ration, the yellow vouchers meant ration from 90 to 100% and the third category represented ration only up to 50%. This way a person usually got only two slices of dumplings with some wish-wash without meat or anything else. That was it. And for dinner we would get only two or three potatoes, a little of sauerkraut and that was all. This way we lived. Of course, when the doctor saw me, I weighted 48 kilograms.”