Radislav Wagner

“I was a witness of one interesting case. During the mining works, there was such regime that the new shift went down the pit and the finishing one went up. Gradually according the levels people moved. I went always at the end. As they were leaving the pit, I guess this could be somewhere in the middle, at about seventh or eighth level, some people were already going up. Suddenly, there was shouting and shooting. Even though I didn’t see them, I knew there were three men trying to escape from the afternoon shift. The night shift followed. So from the afternoon shift, the men tried to use turmoil along with even slight inattention of the guards and in the meantime others were lining up in chains, they managed to launch their escape. However, great shooting began and I know they were killed back then. I cannot surely claim this, but I heard that one of the men reached a house on the next day, where he tried to knock so that the people let him in and helped. Those people were afraid to help, in case he would have been an informer, so when the guard caught him, he shot him down, even though the escapee surrendered.”

“We were meeting the norm up to more than two hundred percent. You know, the drivers fought for us. They didn’t want the civilians, they wanted us, because they knew they made real loads with us. They were also rated according to how much coal they drove away calculating per kilometers. Based on that kind of our work, I earned nice money for those times. My salary was around twenty thousand crowns, what was a huge amount of money back then. So I used to get ten thousand on hand and ten thousand on my bankbook, what wasn’t of the same value, though. Due to this fact, many men didn’t like us there. Many used to go to the pub and there the nickname Black Barons originated. When we came to a restaurant, those waiters knew us, since we had black shoulder boards. They knew who we were, and all the soldiers had to wait until we were being served first. The military guys were mad at us. You know, Olomouc was the military headquarters back then, such military centre.”