Starving Strikes and Protests

The life in prison was basically very monotonous and each day had its rhythm and routine - starting with wake-up and ending with bedtime and going to bed finally. Sometimes this monotonous life was disturbed a little, especially during protests, hunger strikes, and refusing to start working.  There were not many cases that were big and had many people involved, but if they happened they were spontaneous and never really organized.  Anyways, one thing they had in common-the majority of prisoners joined in without a previous agreement. 

One famous example was the hunger strike of 1954, which took place in the women's working camp in Pardubice.  From May 4-7, approximately sixty voluntarily protested and went on a hunger strike.  They were all from the department called Hrad (Castle).  They called a commission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and they investigated the whole situation.  The gain for the protestors was the possibility to get basic hygienic things and regular canteen hours. 

Sixteen months later in September 1955 there was another hunger strike, which was bigger in it's range.  The estimated number of prisoners who participated vary.  Some estimations say there were about 520 women others are more conservative with 105 women who participated on the hunger strike.  Hana Truncová describes the start of the strike this way, "When the hunger strike broke out it went by as a "Chinese Whisper" and at that time there was a new guard in Pardubice.  No one told us her name so we immediately gave her the nickname of Elsa Koch, who was originally a guard of a concentration camp during WWII."  The majority of women I talked to said the hunger strike started as a protest against the bullying from guards and especially the one they called Elsa Koch.  There are often other reasons mentioned such as bad food and bad living conditions.  Some people say that the exact reason for the hunger strike was putting Dagmar Tůmová into solitary confinement.  The hunger strike took place for a week and some women starved even longer.  Julie Hruškové describes, "Afterwards all women stopped starving, but I decided to continue.  There were three of us in one cell and it had lasted for seven days and the guards made the decision that they would start feeding us.  The first was Božka Tomášková who found out that the strike was over and she quit.  Then there was Vendula Švecová who tried to fight, but finally they fed her anyways.  I went the longest.  They were trying to hold me, but I told them, look that's under my dignity to fight here with you.  You have an order to feed me, so go ahead.  So they put a tube in me and gave me broth, but when they were taking the pipe out afterwards I vomited the food on the guard named Ruzyňák who was always very concerned about his appearance.  They took me back to my cell, in total we were on the hunger strike for fourteen days and we were knocking morse codes.  Vendula was already writing me that she didn't feel well.  They told us that the next day we would be taken to Pardubice to be fed through the nose and not the mouth.  I was anxious about it, because I thought I would tell the doctors everything that was going on.  Vendula kept writing me that she didn't feel fine so I told her to start eating that I was fine and I would go to the hospital alone.  However, she collapsed in the evening and without me she refused to start eating, so I had to stop starving."  

Women who were found as the main initiators of the protest were transported to the secret police department in Pardubice on December 15, 1955.  There they were punished with ten days of solitary confinement.  Other women who joined the hunger strike couldn't write letters, receive parcels, or have visitors.  

In Pardubice there was one more incident when there were twelve letters sent to the general secretary of the OSN - Dag Hammarskjöld in June 28, 1956, where women were describing the reasons and ways of arrest and also the conditions of the Czechoslovakian prisons and working camps.  They were demanding the rights of political prisoners.  Some letters were even translated depending on the language skills of the author.  Of course the letters were never sent and even today they are in the personal reports of the authors.  

Probably the biggest revolt maybe for it's mass, character, time, or resulting punishments was the so called, "Noodle Revolt" in the working camp Vojna in 1955.  It started on Monday July 3 and up until today the participants continue to argue the reason for it.  Some of them say it was bad food with worms, some say as an honor to the anniversary of the United States being established, and some say the main commander of the camp started it because he insisted that prisoners line up before each meal.  Frantisek Šedivý says, "The reason for the hunger strike was getting noodles for lunch for several times.  That's also why it's called the Noodle Strike."  Mr. Šedivý remembers, "The situation became acute when hard working prisoners refused to eat boiled noodles served several times and they announced a hunger strike.  It looked like a narrow-minded reason, but it had great consequences.  The noodle was also refused by other shifts so the headquarters couldn't allow hungry prisoners back into the shafts.  So the hunger strike just changed to a strike.  The strike was at the same time as the anniversary of America's independence so the political implications were even deeper.  The head commander called the emergency services, the camp was enclosed, and the guards were armed more heavily.  On the next night a row call was commanded and during that people from emergency services came into the buildings and they began to heavily toss all the cells also called, "filcunk."  High emotions supported prisoners to resist.  When the commander ordered the lineup after the cell toss prisoners responded with singing the national anthem.  The earnestness of the men who were plundering grew, sugar on the floor, together with tobacco, torn up blankets, mud, down trodden clothes.  Wooden walls, where we were hiding literature, as well as the floors were torn up.  It turned into a real mess that can only be done by an uncontrolled violent apparatus.  The majority of our books were destroyed.  The hunger strike lasted four days.  Some prisoners collapsed because they were physically and psychologically exhausted.  On Friday there were just a couple people left who hadn't eaten yet.  The whole camp was a real mess.  Areas between the buildings that were always fresh and clean were damaged, the flowers were trampled on, and everything that was possible to destroy was destroyed.  During the hunger strike some prisoners were transported to normal prisons often with their sentences extended.  So the lineup for each meal was finally enforced and together with that the worst form of bullying."  Some prisoners were able to starve until July 9.  They were 45 men who were punished with solitary confinement and they were sent to normal prisoners.  Eleven prisoners were sentenced for organizing the strike and their sentences were raised from eleven to twelve years.