"After I was trained there I stayed for some four or five years. In the meantime, the amnesty was declared and I stayed there because you could make good money there. From there I moved to Vojna in Lešetice near Příbram. In 1964, they adopted a law that said that those who worked for 10 years in uranium mines would retire at the age of 50. So I stayed there even longer and in 1964 Diamo offered me to work in the production of fuel rods for nuclear power plants. So I went there."
"My name is Miloš Nechvátal. I was born on 12. 4. 1921 in Uzhorod in Carpathian Ruthenia. My dad was a legionnaire and he got to know my mom there. Then he went to Prague to work at the Ministry of defense as a captain working in the air force. I attended a grammar school and graduated in 1938. Then I left to Prague where I studied a school of industry and engineering that lasted two years. Then I started to work for Aero Vysočany, an air-craft producing factory. I stayed there till the end of the Protectorate."
"What comes to my mind most often? The way to the shaft. When we went to the shaft, we had to hold on to an iron rope for the entire duration of the way." "The inmate bus?" "Yeah, exactly."
"I don't like to remember it and my memory is fading anyway. I'm 90 years old. Even though I don't look that old, it's true. Everybody thinks I'm ten years younger."
"Don't make me recall the Red Army. I hate this. They annexed Carpathian Ruthenia. Well, Beneš gave it to them. I was there, disseminating leaflets against the annexation. They would give them sugar in exchange for their signature approving the annexation to the Soviet Union. I was lucky I got out of there. They took me across the border in a draisine. I had a lot of former friends there and the father of a friend was the station master at a small railway station. They illegally took me across the border with a draisine to Čop."
"What preceded it? Nothing at all. On June 25, 1954, which was a Thursday – I remember it as if it were yesterday – the State security came for me to my office. They put me in custody and then into a prison cell. There I met with some Christian dissident who introduced me to the way it worked there. They only came on Monday. They began with giving me questions. 'Who are you meeting with'? I was in most intensive touch with the hockey club. 'Well, we had quite a few hockey players here already'. Who are you meeting with at work'?"
Miloš Nechvátal was born on April 12, 1921, in Carpathian Ruthenia. His father was a Czech legionnaire, his mother a Hungarian from Carpathian Ruthenia. Miloš lived and studied in Carpathian Ruthenia but in 1939, he moved to Prague, where he graduated from a school of industry and engineering. In 1945, he went back to Carpathian Ruthenia to agitate for the preservation of Carpathian Ruthenia in the framework of Czechoslovakia. In the spring of 1946, he secretly fled back to Prague and throughout the following years, until 1954, he worked for the Ministry of heavy engineering. In 1954, he was arrested and sentenced to 4 years in prison (he was released in 1958). He worked as a civilian employee of the uranium mines in the Příbramsko region until 1964. Since 1964, he’s been living in Roztoky u Prahy. After 1989, he helped reconstituting the Sokol in Roztoky u Prahy. In 1990, he was a member of the screening commissions in the Pankrác and Ruzyně prisons. He’s a member of the Confederation of political prisoners of the Czech Republic.
