Vlastimír Zamastil

“I joined in September 1951. We got on a train in Choceň and went to Mimoň. We spent about three weeks there. We received training there: run, left turn, right turn, and so on. After three weeks they put us in cattle train trucks and we rode to Ostrava where we got off. At first we were in Mariánské Hory. There they placed us all into one room. There were about forty of us and we went down to the mine right the following day. It was the Šverma mine. There were some low machines, the n. 50 type, and channels. I have never seen them in my life and I thought: Oh, my... They made us work hard. I don’t know for how long I worked in the Šverma mine. We worked in the Armáda Mír mine after that and then in one more shaft. Eventually we stayed in the barracks in Sovinec and we went to work to the Czechoslovak Army mine in František.”

“This is how it was after the war: we began farming, and when they confiscated our machinery, we were not able to make it, and the national administration committee thus came to our farm. A man who was a great communist, but who was, I would say, slightly stupid, came there to give us orders. He was a road mender and he was sent to our farm as its manager. They were afraid to send somebody to us, because my mom was of fierce temper - not my father, but my mother was - and they were afraid that my mother would kick him out. Therefore they sent this particular man to us. He commanded us what to do. We were not receiving any money anymore, nothing.”

“They released many of them and I was about the last one who remained there. Well, not really the last one, because there were the new draftees. But I thought it was strange that they did not let me go home even after the twenty-four months, and therefore one day I skipped the morning exercise. The commander came and started yelling at me why I had not come for the morning exercise. I spent a week behind the bars for that. I still had to keep working, but each night I had to go to sleep to the prison cell. I skipped the exercise just one day, and for that I had to go to the mine and then to the prison cell. I kept asking myself: ´Why do they do not want to release me?´ They have released everybody but not me.”

“My mom was writing letters to them and her sisters, my aunts, would always send one dollar in every letter. The letters arrived to Šumperk and there they went through the customs office and a note was attached to them that we were obliged to exchange the money in a bank within some fifteen days. Sometimes it did not pass through the customs, and we were thus able to keep the dollar, but this was rare. The aunts would always send a dollar, in every letter.”