“In the labour camp Rovnost, there was barbwire of course, five metres apart. There were two five-metre fences and watchtowers with machine-guns installed at regular intervals. Watchmen guarded the camp from there. We shared the rooms with about forty people. There were bunk beds. We had to work in uranium mines. I didn’t spent much time in the uranium mines, because I wore glasses and I was short-sighted and after several months the prisoners were complaining that I was a threat to them. I was thus taken to a doctor to Sokolov and he found out that I really had some problem with my eyes and so they transferred me to work on the surface. I came to a place where one of the prisoners – right in front of me, near those barbwire fences – lost his nerves and he threw himself on that wire fence and they saw him from the watchtower and the warden shot him to death. My job was to carry tree trunks logs to the saw-mill; they were cutting the wood in order to use it for supporting beams for the mining work.”
“They were chasing the poor man for a long time and they were not able to catch him. He was hiding in Liptál disguised as a nun. They were after him. He organised a group of young fellow friars and the communists intensely wanted to catch him and arrest him. When he realized that he was not going to win, he went to the convent in Liptál near Vsetín. The oblate granted him permission and father Filipec thus received a habit from the nuns and he was wearing it. One time we had a spiritual exercise in Liptál and we did not even recognize him when we were there. He did not speak to us. They eventually caught him. He was sentenced only to fifteen years. But it was terrible. When I was interrogated they were asking me all the time: ‘Where’s Filipec?’ They wanted to disgrace him, too. One time he was walking through Ostrava and some woman flung her arms around him and started kissing him passionately. There was a photographer standing by and taking pictures of them. Then they published it in newspapers, photos of priests kissing. They were simply chasing him. But surprisingly, he has lived to the age of ninety.”
“There was a group of fervent Catholics. I even knew some of them. Certain Josef Vlček approached me immediately and he told me: ‘Look, I’ll assign ten prisoners to you. They’re interested, they’re believers. We’ll always supply you with the reading for Sunday, with some text from the gospel, and you will learn it by heart. We’ll provide you with altar bread.’ On Sundays we were allowed to walk around the wooden prefabricated houses - that was all the walking we had. ‘Your people will always get near to you and you’ll do the liturgy of God’s Word for them and give them the communion if they wish.’ Ruda Zubek served the Holy Mass somewhere deep underground in a mine. They wrapped pieces of white bread rolls or bread in cigarette paper, because he had no altar bread with him. That’s the way it worked. I had ‘my’ prisoners on Sundays and I walked with them. They brought the gospel text to me, hidden in a shoe or delivered in some other way. It worked for some time but then somebody narked on Ruda Zubek. They beat him terribly, they took him away and then he was not there anymore and we thus had to do away without it.”
Václav Kelnar was born March 30, 1929 in Troubky in the Haná region. His inclination to spirituality led him to enrol in the Salesian school in Fryšták in 1940. When the institute was later taken over by Germans, the students found a refuge in a villa amidst forests near Přibyslav and they stayed there until the end of the war. After the liberation, Václav had to assist Soviet soldiers with removal of discarded weapons and ammunition. In April 1950, while he was serving in Ostrava as part of his preparation for spiritual work, Václav and his fellow friars were arrested in so-called Action K, an operation which sought to eliminate all male monastic orders. Václav was interned in the monastery in Osek in north Bohemia and he spent the following seventeen months doing forced labour in the factory Vichr & Co in Duchcov. Afterwards he served in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions for three years. In 1957 he was arrested and sentenced to 15 months. He served his sentence working in the mine Rovnost near Jáchymov. He was active member of the Salesian community in Brno-Žabovřesky since 1991. Václav Kelnar died on December 21st, 2016.
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