CAMP VRŠEK (CODE NAME E)
Camp Vršek at the Barbora Mine is symbolised by thorns in the Stations of the Cross. Its code name was “E”. It is recorded as a forced labour camp for persons assigned extra-judicially to re-education through labour as early as 3 October 1949. The camp was abolished on 25 April 1951, and the premises were transferred from the Ministry of National Defence to the Ministry of Justice. The transfer was completed on 1 June 1951, and on 1 August a prison camp with three barracks was put into operation here. It functioned until 30 March 1957. Unlike most other camps, the buildings were not demolished but were used as accommodation for civilian mine employees and later as barracks of the Czechoslovak People’s Army.
The camp was among the most feared in the region, mainly because of the extremely harsh climatic conditions caused both by its altitude of 1004 metres above sea level and by its position on the windward side of a mountain ridge. Due to the severe climate and mining in unfavourable geological conditions, this workplace recorded the highest number of occupational accidents, including fatal ones, within the entire uranium industry of Czechoslovakia. This was further compounded by the cruelty and brutality of the local guards.
The camp consisted of three prisoner barracks, a punishment block and an administrative building. Storage facilities and workshops known from other camps were here part of the adjacent Barbora Mine. The camp capacity was 450 persons. Although no reports about expansion have survived and maps show only these buildings, records state that on 1 October 1956 there were 868 prisoners and 65 members of the National Security Corps, and on 25 May 1956 even 1100 prisoners. If the camp was not enlarged, it must therefore have been severely overcrowded.
The commanders of the camp were prison guard K. Filsak of the Prison Guard Corps, staff sergeant F. Malina of the National Security Corps, and finally staff sergeant F. Filandr of the National Security Corps.
The punishment block consisted of a concrete bunker with three cells measuring approximately 2 × 1 metres inside. In the shorter wall there was a small barred window which was not glazed even in winter despite temperatures of minus thirty degrees Celsius. The only equipment was a wooden bunk without a mattress and a bucket serving as a toilet. On even days, prisoners placed in punishment received no food at all; on odd days they received coffee for breakfast, soup with a piece of bread for lunch, and unsweetened coffee for dinner. During winter they were also required to clear snowdrifts up to two metres high.
Among the best-known prisoners were Heřman Till, abbot of the Teplá monastery, who secretly provided spiritual comfort, and the national ice-hockey goalkeeper Bohumil “Bóža” Modrý, who refused to be broken and helped others morally by his confident attitude. Another well-known prisoner was Jiří Mucha (son of painter Alfons Mucha), who reflected his experiences from the Jáchymov mines in his book Cold Sun:
“Collection camp Ostrov. From here transports are divided among the individual Jáchymov camps. It feels like one enormous Pankrác prison yard No. 111. Or a prisoner-of-war camp. Crowds of ragged people wait to see what will happen next. Behind the wire stand black hostile mountains. It is fantastic — like a terrifying glimpse into the world of the future. Black mountains all around, wind, rain, and from the guard towers the barrels of machine guns constantly aimed at us. Nikolaj is the worst. High in the mountains, cold, shooting all the time, dead bodies. Large barracks, masses of people, firing slits every fifty metres. And discipline like in the army. The camp is hermetically sealed with double barbed-wire fences and searchlights blaze into the perimeter all night. After lights-out nobody may leave the barracks. Guards shoot immediately. In the middle of the camp there is an ugly, evil place — the punishment block. From the camps to the shafts run kilometre-long corridors of double barbed wire, rocky and steep. Through them they drive us to work like lions into the arena, locked arm in arm and pressed tightly together. Guards run around with sub-machine guns, shouting, driving us on. It is enough to fall out of line and it counts as rebellion. As punishment the whole column marches body to body. We wear clothes like mercenaries from the Thirty Years’ War: black boots, trousers, rubber coats with broad double shoulders and whalers’ hats. Robots whose faces cannot be seen, a mass of moving force. We line up in the dark, rain and wind beating against us, standing for hours like black boulders. Here the fun ends. Like in a horror film the searchlights fix their blinding eyes on us and the whole mountains are filled with cages of thousands of robots. During the night we were woken three times by machine-gun fire. At four o’clock alarm and a one-hour roll call. This is not a camp — this is a front line! For months and months one tells oneself: this must be nonsense! I cannot stay endlessly in this underworld. One searches for escape, believes it must be possible, until one day becomes convinced that the bars of the cage hold equally firm everywhere and there is no way out, only long, endless waiting. Minutes seem like days. Weeks stretch into years.”
After the mine was closed, military units were gradually stationed here. First there was a radiotechnical unit and later Unit VÚ 5849 — the Non-Commissioned Officers’ School for medical instructors. The unit remained here until 1975, when it was transferred to Uherské Hradiště. The buildings then fell into disuse and were finally demolished in 1991.
Previously, the prisoners were commemorated by a memorial plaque bearing the inscription:
WAYFARER, STOP AND REMEMBER
THAT IN THIS PLACE IN THE 1950s
THE COMMUNISTS ESTABLISHED THE BARBORA CONCENTRATION CAMP
(1000 M ABOVE SEA LEVEL),
WHERE POLITICAL PRISONERS — SLAVES — MINED URANIUM.
TELL THE NATION SO THAT IT WILL NOT FORGET!
WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN.
THE PEOPLE OF PILSEN
