Vladimír Štraub

* 1937

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I guarded prisoners in the Bytíz camp

Vladimír Štraub in 2010
Vladimír Štraub in 2010
photo: ISTR

Vladimír Štraub was born in Nechanice near Hradec Králové on 25 July 1937 and spent his childhood and adolescence in Prague, Žižkov. His father came from an old Šumava family of gamekeepers and was a member of the People’s Party. His mother was born to Czech parents in Russia and grew up in Irkutsk. With her knowledge of Russian, she interpreted for Soviet soldiers after the war. Her political views wre close to the National Socialists. Vladimír Štraub completed primary school in Prague and trained as a toolmaker at ČKD. He briefly worked at a stamp factory, and he also took part in “building the borderland” in Teplá near Mariánské Lázně during his part-time job in the 1950s. He enlisted in the army in 1956 and after returning joined the National Security Corps (SNB - police) via recruitment for uranium mines. In 1958, he began working as a guard in the Příbram camps and joined the CPC in 1962. He worked as a guide and supervisor in the Vojna camp. Graduating from the police school in Prague, he worked as a guard in the Bytíz camp. He was supervised two thousand prisoners, many of whom were serving sentences for political reasons. In the camps, he witnessed the Adventists refusing to work Saturdays, the use of solitary confinement and physical violence on political prisoners and ordinary criminals. He was working in the Příbram region in the early 1960s at the time of two great amnesties when many political prisoners were released. He also witnessed the tragical sinking of a part of the camp underground in April 1962. In August 1968, Vladimír Štraub opposed the invasion into Czechoslovakia, for which he was expelled from the Communist Party a year later and subsequently sentenced to a two-month suspended sentence for defamation of race and nation. In early February 1970, he left the ranks of the police and became a miner in Příbram. He first dug shafts, then maintained mine tracks and this is where he stayed until retirement. Throughout the entire normalisation period, Vladimír Štraub coached and co-managed the Příbram ice hockey club.