“When I was imprisoned I was to work in the uranium mine in Bytíz in Příbram. We had a good team there. In my team there were two Jehovah Witnesses and Ing. Buriánek from Veselí nad Lužnicí. We have overcome it. It was not easy, but we did not suffer from hunger anymore. It changed a lot after 1953 – but before 1953, well, those prisoners did have hard times. So much beating and slapping… but I have not even been slapped, because they knew, they were not so stupid, and they knew that it had been a provocation. They rather tested me instead.”
“My father meanwhile died in 1959, and I wanted to go to the funeral. ‘It is not possible, you still need to serve a great part of your sentence! It is not possible.’ They released me a year later. My wife went to see me one day, it was still before the trial, and she was so... [in an advanced stage of her pregnancy] and she wore glasses. ‘How come that you have glasses?’ ‘Well, my eyes are getting weaker.’ ‘Don’t worry about it, I won’t be here for more than three years!’ Then the next time we saw each other was at the court trial. [The investigator] tells me: ‘Mrázek, you told your wife that you would not be here for longer than three years. What do you mean by that? You are to hang, and this is the Article 1, 86, section 2. Twenty-five years of imprisonment or capital punishment...’ ‘Well, that’s what I believe!’ And I won. Perhaps he was later surprised.”
“The StB officer came to see me four days before the amnesty. He probably wanted to establish cooperation with me and I told him: ´’You see, I will not do this. I know how it all was.’ There was quite a number of doctors and spy experts. We have discussed it all , how it all works and he asked me: ‘And how do you feel about it?’ I said: ‘I don’t have any feelings about it! I don’t care. I know what happened.’ He says: ‘But you don’t want to stay here for fifteen years, or do you?!’ I replied: ‘Well, no, I don’t want to stay here.’ ‘And where is your mother?’ ‘In Pardubice.’ ‘And your father-in-law?’ ‘In Leopoldov.’ (meaning in prisons in these towns – transl.’s note) ‘They go home!’ It was already four days before the amnesty. I was taken aback. I said: ‘If you can, release them. It was my fault and I stand by it.’ And then they eventually released me as well. They knew that I was sentenced based on a provocation, and so they thought: ‘There is no point in holding him in prison.’ Times have already changed.”
Josef Mrázek was born November 3, 1924 in Prusinovice na Hané into a family of farmers. His father became a mayor of Prusinovice for the People‘s Democratic Party in the 1930s. In February 1944 Josef was sent to Berlin to do forced labour there, and he worked in the factory Blaupunkt. At the beginning of June he left the job and he returned home. Thanks to his father, who was on good terms with the police, his illegal return was not discovered. After 1948 he worked as a driver for the ČSAD company for some time and then as a lorry driver in Ostrava. The StB Security Police took an interest in him in relation to Karel Sochatzi, who was involved in forming an anti-state group and who contacted Josef as an agent-provocateur. Sochatzi tried to get Josef involved in an alleged espionage. Josef was arrested in 1957. His pregnant wife and his father-in-law and mother-in-law were likewise held in pre-trial detention. Josef was sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment for alleged espionage. His father-in-law and mother-in-law were sentenced as well, to ten and seven years, respectively. His wife was released. Josef Mrázek returned home after the amnesty in 1960 after two years of working in the uranium mines in Bytíz, and he was reunited with the rest of his family. In 1968, he was allowed to have his penalty annulled and removed from the criminal record. He was under surveillance and he continued working in a coal mine in Ostrava until his retirement. During the 1970s and 1980s he was involved in distribution of illegal pamphlets in the Holešov area. He was rehabilitated in 1990. Josef Mrázek was a member of the Confederation of Political Prisoners. He applied for the approval of his status as a participant in the third-wave resistance movement. He died in 2015.
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