"...I mean, the Red Cross will come to the camp, to the camp in Vykmanov. So we were cleaning it for a week, everything was so clean. And they even opened a canteen there. We normally had lunch outside on Sundays in an eschus. They poured it outside, and as usual in the morning, we got a mug of coffee in the eschus. We got black coffee with us - but it was in a kettle - and the screws gave us a quarter of a commissary on the spot during what was supposed to be lunch. In other words, the dining room was open, and we were even allowed to shower beforehand. Otherwise, we showered either in the rain outside or once a week, but I'm not sure if it was once a week or once a fortnight. We showered with cold water in those showers. And, of course, there was no soap. In other words, we had the opportunity to do all this, and they even prepared a ping pong table for us in the dining room - I don't know if it was from the storekeepers' supplies."
"...So there's a tin shed where you couldn't stand very much inside. It was on these columns, and there was one small barred window. And then we found out that the same barred opening was on the floor. After a while, we learned that it was a prison cell that was so hot in the summer that no one could stay there for 48 hours. And the punishment for which someone was put there was that, for example, he spoke back to the guards, did not follow the daily schedule, or was guilty in some other way, such as complaining about bad or little food. That people are really punished this way, and they would not last the 48 hours there, I found that out one Sunday when two prisoners who were still there called out that one of them had probably died there. The guards came from their lodgings from the gate. They came inside and found that one of them was really dead and ordered us to carry him out. So two of us went in and wanted to carry him out by the hands and feet, but we were ordered to drag him out on the three or four steel steps. I know that for many years I woke up with horror when I remembered or when I remembered the hollow sound made by the dead man's skull as it slammed against those steel steps. So it was an experience I couldn't forget."
"Well, I still expected that nothing extra would happen. They asked me several times if I would confess. I said I had nothing to confess and let them give me some advice. I almost started joking because I somehow felt still quite confident. And suddenly, the Russian got up and turned Gottwald and Stalin, the pictures, to face the wall. And I made one last joke—that was the last time—and I said, 'And you can put Gottwald and Stalin facing the wall? That must be forbidden!' Well, they pounced on me. I got hit in the left ear. Immediately I started bleeding."
Jiří Kraus was born on 31 March 1930 in Brno. In 1948, he co-founded an anti-state group that printed and distributed anti-regime leaflets. The group was exposed in 1949, and the witness got sentenced to ten months in prison in 1950. As part of his sentence, he went through a guarded camp, from which he was transported to work in a quarry in Litice and a labor camp in Vykmanov near Jáchymov, where he worked in uranium mines. After returning from the camp in Vykmanov, he worked as an auxiliary worker at the Victorious February factories in Hradec Králové. He repeatedly asked for permission to study at a university. In 1954, he started studying architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Technology in Brno without being accepted, which he managed to verify later. In 1960, he completed his studies and started working at Stavoprojekt in Hradec Králové. In 1966, he became the head of the Pelhřimov workplace in the České Budějovice Stavoprojekt, and in 1968 he moved to the central workplace in České Budějovice. Here, among other things, he designed several schools in the South Bohemian Region. As a result of the brutal interrogations and the collapse of the mine, he faces lifelong health consequences. He is a member of the Confederation of Political Prisoners. In 2021 he lived in České Budějovice.
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