“There were about three of us who were released, and they were releasing us in twenty-minute intervals. You had to be gone within twenty-four hours. Otherwise, if they found you anywhere in the vicinity, on the road in Jáchymov, or in the Jáchymov spa, you would be sent back to prison. When we were released we agreed to wait for each other and go away together. We didn’t even think about staying there – you got out and you walked and walked away.”
“There were deep forests in Kostelec (nad Vltavou), and the Germans who were running away from the front were there after the war. Russian soldiers were already there and they were shooting them without mercy. We were not surprised at all, because they were doing to them what the Germans had done to them before. You could frequently see a corpse floating in the Vltava River. When they came across them they shot them without mercy. We (foresters) thus received an order that we were not allowed to carry rifles when on duty, and we were not allowed to wear uniforms. Our uniforms were green, and the Germans were there and you could confuse us with them, and we therefore walked in civilian clothing and we tried to avoid the forest as much as possible.”
“It was tough in the labour camp there; I was in Horní Slavkov. We walked one kilometer through a fenced corridor to the shaft n. 8, in all kinds of weather. The corridor led over fields, or over what used to be a field, and when it rained, there was so much mud that the guys sometimes even lost a rubber boot in it. The labour camp was growing bigger in size, there were three thousand people, and the stone for construction was obviously brought there by us while we walked. The commander stood in the gate and when he thought that a guy was able to carry a bigger stone, the man had to step aside and carry the stone back. Wardens walked along the corridors and they accompanied him back to the quarry and he had to pick a bigger stone. It could easily happen that you lost your meal because of that. Meals were distributed in the meantime, and when you came back three hours later, sometimes there was nothing left.”
Václav Holub was born July 11, 1930 in Holíč in Slovakia. His father Václav and his mother Josefa, née Uhrová, originally came from the Písek region. Until 1938 his father worked in Slovakia as a state official. Václav’s older brother Jiří was involved in an anti-state group led by general Petřík during the war, and their father was hiding weapons for them. Upon request from his schoolmate, Václav Holub let a certain man named Schubert spend a night in his home in September 1948. Schubert was allegedly on his return journey from Germany after being released in amnesty and he had missed his last connection to Prague. On October 21, 1948, StB Security Police picked up Václav from school and took him at first to Pilsen-Bory and then to Prague to the investigation office in Bartolomějská 4. Then he was detained in the prison in Prague-Pankrác, and from there he was sent back to Pilsen again with a sentence of four years of imprisonment for plotting against the republic. In the same year his brother emigrated to the United States. While serving his sentence, Václav worked in the kaolin factory in Třemošná and as a reward for his work he was transferred to the foundry plant in Králův Dvůr u Berouna. He was however caught when his foreman was secretly handing him packages with food, and he thus spent the last years of his sentence in uranium mines in the Prokop mine in Horní Slavkov. In 1954 Václav was drafted to do the military service in spite of holding the ‘blue booklet’ - unable to be enlisted for health reasons - and he was assigned to serve in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions in Písek and then in a tank unit in České Budějovice. Since he did not fit into a tank, he was immediately sent to an artillery unit to Rakovník. He was continuously under StB surveillance. After finishing his military service he began working in the company ČSAD Příbram, where he eventually worked nearly continuously until his retirement. václav Holub passed away on June, the 9th, 2018.
