Adolf Kučera: The Devil made that place. How Czechs died in Russia
- Keywords: deportations / Czechs in the Gulag / Caucasus / River Ob / executions / mass graves / defiled remains / hunger / Great Terror
Adolf Kučera came from a family of Caucasus Czechs that was tragically struck by the Soviet terror twice. In the early 1930s, it was torn out of its home region and, without any explanation, deported into Siberian wasteland thousands of kilometres away. And when the hard-working people finally managed to adapt to the extremely difficult local conditions, the Bolsheviks had many of them shot, claiming they were involved in espionage in the inhospitable frosty region.
Despite multiple efforts, the family had no knowledge of what had happened to their loved ones. The authorities only admitted that they were dead more than half a century later. The survivors never even had an opportunity to bury their remains with dignity, as those were desecrated in an appalling manner.
Karel Šilhavý: A false accusation of espionage took him to camps and banishment in Kolyma
- Keywords: Frost / Kolyma / hard work / mining / childhood in Kolyma / banishment / arrest / Great Terror
When prisoners set out to work in the winter, temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero were common. Day after day, week after week – the winter in Kolyma is nine months long. There is nothing in sight but camps. And wild nature: lovely yet cruel, such is the entire Kolyma: a territory in Russia’s Far East as large as a half of Europe and rife with gold and other precious metals. After all, those were the reason why a massive system of labour camps was set up there during Stalin’s era. Those were the worst in all of the Gulag archipelago.
Evženie Věsniková-Němečková: Family in the clutches of the Gulag and the Gestapo
- Keywords: Czechs in the Gulag / Great Terror / Arrests / Interrogations / Executions / Life in the Gulag / Kazakhstan / Algeria / Exile / Family relations
She received a medal from Stalin, then her husband was executed, her son (who later became a Soviet national artist) was taken away, and she was finally imprisoned in a gulag in Soviet Kazakhstan. Evženie Věsniková (née Němečková) was one of four Czech prisoners of the brutal women's camp in Akmolinsk.
Evženie was not the only one in her family to suffer bad fate. Her cousin, the legionnaire writer and diplomat Zdeněk Němeček, also suffered. In the Czech Republic, he was imprisoned by the Gestapo for participating in the resistance and after the Bolshevik coup, he had to flee from the communists across the Atlantic. Evženie's brother Konstantin Němeček also tried to save him from Stalinist repression. But instead of finding freedom, he ended up in a gulag, just like his sister. For ten years.
Margita Petriková
- Keywords: Czechoslovaks in the Gulag / Arrest / Karaganda / Kazakhstan / Karlag / Work in the Gulag / Life and conditions in the Gulag / Svoboda's Army / Family traumas
František Štefan: They played cards and criticized Stalin, never to return home.
František Štefan was one of six Czechs arrested in June 1941 in Soviet Kyrgyzstan. They were apparently good friends, they met regularly at each other's homes in the Kyrgyz capital of Frunze (today's Bishkek), talked, played cards.
Together in the mid-1920s they came from Czechoslovakia to the backward Soviet Kyrgyzstan to build the communist cooperative Interhelpo and with it the dream of an equal society. However, that was long gone, as were many of their old comrades. They either returned to Czechoslovakia disillusioned, or disappeared in the late 1930s in the clutches of the NKVD secret police during the so-called Great Terror. At that time, having the "inappropriate" nationality was enough to decide on execution.