Nearly 250,000 political prisoners were interned in labour camps like Vojna during the communist regime after WWII. Come with us to visit this country´s first memorial to these victims open to the public.
5 HOUR ROUND TRIP

A combination with Antonin Dvorak´s Museum , the Pilgrim Site of the Holy Mountain in Pribram or Dobris Chateau is possible.

In total there were imprisoned 248000,- persons in the camps like Vojna during the communist regime. Vojna Concentration Camp is one of many, but one of that that are the memorial.
During the communist regime were:
248,000 people imprisoned
300,000 people persecuted
247 people executed in the years 1948-1960 because of the political reasons
60 people shot (while beeing arrested, etc..)
2,000 people died in the prisons

The catalogue of crimes perpetrated by the Nazism doesn´t list a single crime that the Communism did not commit as well. While the countries of the free world after the defeat of Germany in 1945 preserved the original concentration camps only as a memento of the Nazi tyranny´s victims, the countries behind the Iron Curtain began using most of them to incarcerate and murder their own political prisoners. Moreover, before the fall of Communism in 1989 a great care was taken to obliterate all traces of these camps.
Such was also the history of he prison camp Vojna. According to the testimonies of local residents, Nazis began to build here a prison camp during the war, however, no written records thereof exist. The first involuntary inhabits there, in the area between the future pits Vojna I and Vojna II, had began German POWs, transferred there in 1947 from the uranium mines from Jachymov mines. At that time the German POWs had already acquired two years of mining experience in the vicinity of Jachymov. Until the Christmas in 1949, they worked and lived at the camp Vojna in pits Vojna 1, Vojna 2 and Vojna 3, which was the future pit Kamenna.
At that time, the inmates from so-called TNP Camps (Camps of Forced Labor) were brought there. People were sent to the TNP not on the basis of a sentence meted out by a regular court of law, but on the basis of an administrative order issued by the so-called action Trio of the Regional National Committees. This procedure was enacted by the law that came into effect in the summer 1948 (Law No. 247/1948 Co.) and most of the decisions of the action Trios resulted from recommendations of the StB - the State Security police (political Police). During the summer 1951, the inmates in this camp were replaced by the so-called criminals endangering the state security sentenced by the special Satet Courts. They came mostly from the State Penitentiary Bory in Pilzen (Plzen) . The secret report of the Security Committee from April 23, 1952, on the placement of inmates stated that the uranium mines Vojna/Pribram, Nikolaj, Vykmanov II, Rovnost and Elias (in Jachymov region) were designed for the most dangerous perpetrators of teh crimes against the state security whe were meted out senteces of more than ten years. In 1953 the new camp Bytiz, built in the vicinity joined these camps.

According to another document from the secret police archives, the units of the Ministry of Interior guarding these camps had to be armed with the heavy machineguns.
The communist regime used the Camp Vojna as a correctional facility from 1951 to the summer 1961 when its inmates were transferred to the near-by camp Bytiz, because all the uranium ore was extracted by that time. The camp was taken out from the jurisdiction of the ministry of Interior and placed into that of the Ministry of Defense, part there of having been liquidated and other part thereof having served as a storage facility. In October 2001, the army gave it to the Regional Museum of City of Pribram.
However, the was he camp looks now gives only a false picture of its original state. There was not asphalt road. Obviously, the pillbox punisment cell did not have handicap access. The barracks were the bountry barracks taken from the Wehrmacht, the German Nazi army, and they lacked thermal insulation and understandably had no electric heating. Winter was always a harsh season for the prisoners, as the barrack rooms were assigned only one bucket of coal per day. The punishemnt facilities and the pillbox was Mr. Vladimir Valenta, today better known as the Station Mater from the Oscar movie Closely Watched trains (1967). He spends there 27 days in 1953. The camp was reconstructed thanks to the government of the Czech republic, Confederation of the Political Prisoners, the Museum of the IIIrd Resistance, City of Pribram and the Mining Museum of Pribram.

S from Prague - 1,5 hour to drive
Trip:
1) Vojna Communist Concentartion Camp - 5 hour round trip


Our popular tours are outlined on our web sites:
www.private-tours.net
www.private-tours.cz
jewish.tourstoprague.com