You are here: home / Welcome at Political Prisoners.eu

Join us ...

News:

Preparatory meeting for the ‘Learning from the Past’ project

3.3.2019

From 1 to 3 March, we met in Potsdam to prepare the first seminar to take place as part of the project ‘Learning from the Past.

Donate Now!

13.2.2019

Support the volunteer research initiative Political Prisoners.eu and help our projects come true!

Learning from the Past: Applications Open!

28.1.2019

It is our pleasure to invite you to join an educational project for Czech and German youth workers and teachers of history and civic education. During two seminars the participants will visit several places of memory and will be trained in effective and attractive methods of teaching about the tragic events of the 20th century and the emergence of totalitarian regimes.

Nikolaj Camp (codename A)

20.12.2017

The Nikolaj Camp was one of the 18 prisoner labour camps operated by the Czechoslovak communist regime in the uranium mines of the Jáchymov, Horní Slavkov and Příbram regions. It was established in 1951 on the site of a former forced labour camp and shut down in 1958. Nikolaj, with a capacity of almost one thousand prisoners, was infamous for its brutal regime. In the early years, political prisoners represented a very small minority of its inmates and were often subject to open violence by the warders and other prisoners.

We Have Launched Political Prisoners´ Prague with Airbnb

27.6.2017

Airbnb is excited to announce the arrival of Trips in Prague, expanding beyond accommodation by offering bookable Experiences hosted by locals in and around the city. We are proud to be part of it. We have introduced a guided tour in the footsteps of the best known political prisoners of Czechoslovak communism. Come and join the tour!

Welcome to the updated website of Political Prisoners.eu

This site was originally created in the fall 2008 with the following objectives:

attract the attention of youth and general public by publishing life stories of former prisoners of Stalinism
offer the stories in written as well as video and audio formats (short sequences)

The published content was enriched, edited and updated by volunteers of the Czech civic organisation Political Prisoners.eu in July 2011. Thanks to their efforts we have proofread all our English interviews and made them more comprehensive. At least we tried. Though we are mostly Czech researchers we are constantly working on delivering more content in English.

This website became part of a trans-disciplinary, non-governmental and non-profit oral history project which aimed at commemoration of former political prisoners who survived jailing in Stalinist prisons and working camps in the former Czechoslovakia and other European countries. In 2009 - 2012 we developed new initiatives, events and networks targeted at a more profound research interest in the field of oral histories of politically oppressed around the globe.

Commemoration of victims of Stalinism, in our opinion, was of an utmost importance not only when the whole world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of Iron Curtain. Former political prisoners were and still are the living witnesses of past. They certainly should not be heard only on anniversaries. We do not have many chances left to listen, research, and learn from their stories. However, we are the witnesses of the future and thus potential carriers of their important memories. We wish to contribute to the exchange and popularisation of their memories. That is why you can find here transcriptions of oral history interviews and narratives and short multimedia.Yet all he ideas expressed in the narratives are the narrators’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewers or of the Political Prisoners.eu.

We would like to invite everyone interested in supporting this project to contact us via email: info@politicalprisoners.eu.

Thank you in advance for your interest and help!

The Team of volunteer research initiative Political Prisoners.eu.

Highlights from a commented tour of Nikolaj Camp:

Memories of Jáchymov: trail to past