"I have a good experience with one, a man named Zdeněk. I said, 'What do you need from a prisoner?' He pulled a knife out of his pocket and said, ‘Look, I have this knife, and it’s gotten a bit rusty. I need to clean it. Do you have something here I could use to clean it?’ And I said, ‘Sandpaper.’ He said, ‘Couldn’t you sharpen it on a grinder? It’s not very sharp.’ And I replied, ‘Just don’t go slitting someone’s throat with it.’ He laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry about that. Can I ask you something?’ And I said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ ‘Why are you here?’ I said, ‘Oh, for nothing.’ ‘What do you mean by that? You must’ve done something,’ he said. ‘Exactly because I didn’t do anything, that’s why I’m here.’ ‘And what were you supposed to do?’ I said, ‘I was supposed to become a soldier.’ And he said, ‘You got yourself locked up for that? I should’ve done the same. My fiancée broke up with me when I said I’d join the prison guards, the wardens, and now I regret it. You know, I need something from you. If you could sharpen this knife for me, I’ll come by to pick it up. Just leave it there like this.’ And I said, ‘But we finish at two o’clock, the shift ends at two.’ He said, ‘Then just leave it up there for me, and I’ll take it.’ But he came by about half an hour later and said, ‘Can I take it now?’ I thought he’d left it there and that later he’d send a warden to search the place, and they’d find it, and I’d be in trouble. His name was Sucharda."**
"The cart was covered with sacks, and the uranium ore was piled there, and the cart went under the house, under the shed that was on the track, so he could see right into the cart. He must have been milling around in it because it was moving, so he immediately gave the signal - and stop. He poured out of that cart and ran. But he didn't shoot at it." - "And it was already out?" - "Yes, it was already outside the camp, at the waste dump where the tailings were. So they immediately poured out and said, 'He can't run far.' Finally he stood at the station and waited for the train to come."
"The miner came in and brought me a wreath of crowns to sharpen for him. And he said, 'What are you here for? I said, 'I'm here because I didn't do anything.' 'What were you supposed to do?' I said, 'I didn't want to learn...' and he said, 'Are you a Jehovah's Witness? Do you at least have a Bible?' I said, 'I don't.' He said, 'Well, I'll get you something.'" - "And that was a civilian?" - "Yes, that was a civilian. So he brought me, it wasn't a Bible, but it was the New Testament in Slovak. He said, 'Don't take it to the cell, they'll take it away from you during the inspection. They'll turn the cell upside down, they won't even leave a pin in there that shouldn't be there.' So I made a little hiding place under the vise, where I nailed a cutting board, and I put it on the cutting board. Because when it was hammered into the table, so it couldn't fall out. When they opened it up and looked, they didn't find anything in there and there was nothing in there because there was only tools and they saw that in the box. And then when I went home on amnesty, there were brothers who had already been there a second time who weren't covered because whoever had more than a year didn't get it."
"Dr. Svoboda, the prisoner, says, 'Look, if I were you, I'd be making excuses for the fact that you're suffering from polio. And I told him that I would not say such things and that I would not do the military service. And he says to me, 'But that's the end of you, you're written off. Why do you think they sent you to the seventh floor? Because there's high radioactivity. There are only lifers, murderers and those who defy them and don't listen to them. And that's you. They know they can't do anything to you, so they want to take your life.' And there's been many times when there's been an unexploded cartridge. And a sergeant would come in and say, 'They didn't load it here, so drill it out if it's long enough,' and it would bang and cut him up."
"I saw World War II. For example, in my village there was a big barn that was also a church. There were about 250 Russian prisoners of war who were brought there on February 13, 1945. Twenty-one below zero, some had their legs wrapped with sacking, one had only a coat on and nothing else. Frozen like icicles, hungry like wolves - and they walked all night. And so we brought them bread, and someone else had fruit, and we threw that over the fence. The German soldiers who were guarding them threatened us and said, 'Get out of here or we'll shoot.' And as they were picking up the food, they were beating them with their rifle butts, kicking them and yelling at them. And I came home and I was crying. I was twelve years old, and my mother said, 'What happened to you?' So I told her, and she said, 'Boy, you mustn't go there, the war, it's a terrible thing.'"
Vladimír Wais was born on 28 September 1933 in Miletice into a farming family. His father had a total of seven children, and from an early age he raised Vladimír in the spirit of the Catholic faith. His first experience with the Jehovah‘s Witnesses religious group was around the age of eighteen, when one of the members visited him, and after talking with him, Vladimir Wais decided to join the organization. Because of his new religious convictions, he decided not to enter compulsory military service in 1953. Because of this, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison in January 1954. He served his sentence in the Ležnice uranium camp in Horní Slavkov region. In prison he was persuaded several times to renounce his faith, but this never happened. In May 1955 he was released thanks to an amnesty granted by the President of the Republic. Later, he was supposed to re-enlist for the war, but doctors found that he had serious health consequences from the polio he had suffered in childhood. He obtained a certificate of exemption from military duty. After his release from prison, he joined the Somet company in Teplice as a grinder and later worked as a maintenance worker in the bakeries in Ústí nad Labem. After 2000, he received judicial and financial rehabilitation. He lived all his life in Ústí nad Labem and regularly attended religious meetings. He died in December 2022.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
