Prisoners´ Diversity in Czechoslovakian Jails
The society in Communist prisons and working camps was very diverse. In a small place ex-generals met abbots of different monasteries, prominent politicians and murderers, thieves and Nazi-(non)collaborators[1]. Karel Pecka put his life experience in a book called "Motáky ztracenému" (Secret messages to the lost man) and in it he described society within the camps. "Mukls in working camps were divided into groups or classes. The first one, highest in its number, were state prisoners, or so-called political. The second group was formed by Germans, whose biggest characteristic was passivity. Life had given them a lesson and so the didn´t show any secret disdain to the guards, they avoided all possible conflicts, they were well disciplined and always fulfilled the commands the way they were used to from the war. Out of their lines, there were the lowest number of sneaks. Although they were in cahoots with others, they were not friendly to the political prisoners. The third type was individually in total disharmony and consisted of criminals. They consisted of murderers to bullies and safebreakers to people who stole something from national property, to rapists. A wide gallery of people out of which the majority sympathized with political prisoners, no matter what these criminals sat for. They looked for their company and participated on their postures and things. Many times criminals (also called "tattooed") pretended to be political prisoners and behaved very well. The fourth category was represented by collaborators and the fifth by Slovak Fascists. Except for the gift to hate everything, all Czechs, democracy, all values and ideas, they were characteristic in their ability to behave like a parasite, using everything for the own prosperity."
The prison society could be divided into three groups - retribution prisoners, who were sentenced for their activity during war, many of them collaborators, informers, and helpers of the Nazis; criminal prisoners, who always appear in every prison and political prisoners. The democratic prison is different. During communism political prisoners were seen as the worst group, they were sentenced according to paragraph 231/ 1948 Sb. Among them we could find many innocent people, who were just standing in the way to a newly growing communist regime and people who really actively fought against communism. Whether they printed the leaflets and distributed them among people, or sent secret messages and reports to foreign countries, or whether they were part of the organized anti-state groups. They had one thing in common. They did not want to stand in the corner and watch how Communism got stronger in Czechoslovakia and close their eyes and not see the harm and injustice they inflicted. On the base of all this they were regarded as the most dangerous criminals because they threatened the whole "human-democratic" regime.
People from various groups and different moral characteristics were meeting in prisons and working camps and had to find some "modus-vivendi" to learn how to get along well together. Let's have a short look at how the relations among the prisoners looked like. On one side there were those who were ready to take advantage of anything they could from prison headquarters. They became the "olders" of camps and cells and instead of making the lives of their prison mates easier, they just made it tougher. They had power over others plus they got some material benefits like packages, visits, letters, or even money tickets. One such "older" in the camp was also a retribution prisoner Břetislav Jeníček who organized a beating group of the camp. This group was officially allowed to beat others, mainly political prisoners of course. Jožka Husek mentions this, "All in all, they would attack us, political prisoners, and they would hit us, beats us, and kick until we would fall unconscious." We could go further with names, people who acted in similar ways was also Rudolf Fuchs in camp Concord or Václav Bidžovský in camp 12 near Slavkov.
On the other hand, there was a majority of those who decided to respect each other. Alois Macek speaks of some in his interview, "...such thieves and defaulters were quite nice people. I would say criminal prisoners had a high respect for us and tried to behave well towards us. We were tolerant and forbearing because we didn't know what they were sentenced for. It matched quite well together." All relations must be considered individually. Of course there were always people who felt powerful and liked to terrorize others. On the other side there were people who worshiped moral statements and would never go so low as to serve the regime. Finally all of them knew there was just one enemy, the communist regime, in prison represented by guards.
[1] Josef Stejskal can remember the various people who he was in prison with, "From solitary confinement I went to a normal cell. I was making the. There were cells from number 45 to 60 working together. At one cell there were between 40-70 people. There I met different people, many times these people were famous. So I got to know generals, bishops, professors, prime ministers, politicians...people who already had life experience. (...) From generals it was General Janoušek, who was the commander of the Czech pilots in England, (...) General Kutlvašr, who led the Prague riots. Then there was General Syrový, who was the commander of legions in Russia. I called him Mr. General when I saw him and he replied, "Pepíček, have you ever been in Sokol, how did we call each other over there?" So ever since we would call him Brother General. He was so nice. I was only 27 years old and he was close to 70. Then there were poets, writers,..." General Kutlvašr and his natural authority is mentioned in a funny story of Alois Macek, "There are some special stories as for example the one about General Kutlvašr, who led the Prague riots. We sat together in cell 43. There were 60 of us and it was really hot. I took my pants off and I had just white prisoner's underwear. There was lunch and I was holding my pot on my knees eating potato gulash. General Kutlvašr came up to me and he told me, "Hi Lojzík." I replied, "Hello, Mr. General." I had a huge amount of admiration for him. He asked whether he could sit next to me and I just blushed because to sit next to General Kutlvašr was a great honor for me. He went on, "You know it's a hard time we are going through here, but even though we got into such humility by our own nation and we still have to remain people and we need to uphold a certain level. So please Lojzík, put your pants back on."