Miroslav Šír

"I have a memory of them sending us to work in the mine on Christmas Day. The civilians who were present there hadn't worked on holidays. We were supposed to. The guys got angry. The wardens stayed upstairs and down there, there was the manager who chased us to work. When I arrived, he was already there. There was a water tank which was used to push water out. They threw him in there, wanting to drown him. As he held to the rim, they stomped on his finger so that he'd let go. Eventually, they pulled him out. He went up the pit and we haven't seen him since."

"It was terrible there. Initially, the norm was eighteen loaded cars, then they increased it to twenty-one. When we failed to meet it, we'd go from work directly to the bunker. The bunker was placed under the compressor cooling tank. When it was freezing cold, the walls were covered in white frost. The next day they sent us to work. If we failed to fulfill the norm again, we'd go back to the bunker. It ended up being every second day."