Vojtěch Kříž

* 1944

  • “On the August 22 the night shuffle refused to go up the mine. The screws were afraid to go down there, and they were also afraid that the prisoners would open the ammunition depots. They were throwing down; you certainly do not know that; when there was an alarm on the shaft, there was an ampoule, a gas called mercaptan. It caused a terrible smell. The machines in the shaft were driven by compressed gas. Merkaptan was put in ampoules into the compressor boxes, the compressed air tossed it into the shaft, and in a moment you could feel it everywhere. The sixteenth shaft was a incoming hole... They threw it there, and when we started to mine, the mercaptan's was smelling there badly for a long time. I also witness as the prisoners captured the prisoners punished by leading them up on the surface with handcuffs on...”

  • "The barracks were a former Tobacco factory in Tábor. There were a hundred and twenty people in our room ... There was one supervisor. At six o'clock we had to wake-up and start the morning training. The barracks were in a square. I was in the fifth unit of the first squad, and there were always two teams, the “A” and the “B”. They had two commanders... When they gave us the warm-up exercise until at seven a.m., some guys felt knackered and were done for the whole day. Then breakfast, they cooked well for us. At eight o'clock we were ready to work. We, the tankers, went to the classrooms, where they taught us the theory and then the tank ramps... They told us behind the tank like inside a tank, we were all mudy. At midday, lunch was served, and we got there all dirty, with boots covered in mud. We had to clean it with a cloth and we had get clean ourselves and wash up. There was only cold water available, just once a week, when we were showering, on Friday or Saturday, we could use the warm running water. Clean up, wash up and ready again. After lunch we had another job, tank ramps and classrooms. We could leave the barracks only about once a month. It was a really hard training.”

  • “There was a lot of arguments about what was going on, no one really knew... Finally we figured: ´No, there will not no mining´. But there was nothing else left for us ... There were big charging stations, big trafo and gas stations. The water had to be drawn out from the shaft all the time, so six guys went down the mine to do the work, otherwise no one. There were six of us on each floor, switching off the chargers, switching off the fuses and securing the pumps... We went down and did not know, if we would ever get up again. As we got up to the surface again there were great demonstrations. The people stood there with a large manifest label saying: "Not a gram of uranium more," uo on the roofs.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    knihovna ZŠ Jiráskovy Sady, Příbram, 23.11.2017

    ()
    délka: 
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Příbram, 10.06.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:20:47
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Appreciate, what you got; freedom of speech, of travel, as we had none of that

basic military service
basic military service
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Vojtěch Kříž was born on 2 April, 1944 in Příbram. He lived with his parents in Radětice and went to school in Stěžov and later to Milín. He apprenticed a mining locksmith. At the age of eighteen he began working in the mines and liked his job. During basic military service the witness was sent to serve at the tank troops in Tábor. He graduated from the sub-officer school. In 1966 he began working at the shaft 16. Following the Warsaw Pact armies occupation on 21 August, 1968 he participated in a weekly strike together with his colleagues. Apparently the miners were just maintaining the mining equipment and secured the operation of the pumps, so that the mined did not get flooded, but otherwise did not work at all. He remembered the chaos the occupation brought, and people purchasing all kinds of supplies; there were labels saying „Not a gram of uranium more“ and the occupants, who replied to explanations and questions only by single words referring to order and contra revolution. The occupation meant the end of all hopes he had for the future of our country. The only memory left, in his words, was a lovely meeting with Alexander Dubček and Josef Smrkovský with the miners. In 1969 he married and began constructing the family house with help of his work mates. He works in uranium mine for eleven years. It took ten months for him to recover from a heavy injury, which he survived only by a miracle. After that he could only work on the surface. He had a son and has two grandsons. Currently he works in the Mining Museun in Březové Hory.