‘Jáchymov’s Hell’: Trekking in the Memoryscape of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Forced Labour Camps

This article treks through the timeworn remnants of Czechoslovakia’s Communist forced and correctional labour uranium camps in the Ore Mountains in the northwest Bohemian region of Jáchymov. These camps held tens of thousands of detainees, largely political prisoners convicted in sham trials or individuals sent there for re-education. Conditions were deplorable. Throughout the 1950s, the young Czechoslovak Communist regime compelled detainees to hard, life threatening labour and subjected them to maltreatment and arbitrary violence. This article traces some of the visible, invisible or overgrown artefacts of the former camps, as well as public as private memories about what happened there. It reflects on the current memoryscape of these forgotten places of human suffering and describes the aesthetics of these aging sites of atrocity.


Introduction
Through the 1989 so-called 'Velvet Revolution' Czechia underwent a relatively peaceful transition from communism to liberal democracy and a market economy. As in any post-transition context, however, the histories of the troubled past are far from settled. Indeed, myths are circulated and recirculated-and facts forgotten or lost in emotions, political manipulations and local sensitivities. The questions of what, when, how, even where to remember-for instance, who are the oppressors and who are the oppressed-are extremely blurred and complex. Accordingly, the recent past of the 40-year-long Communist repression remains a very contentious and debated issue in Czechia. The fact that large parts of the Czech society in one way or another 'collaborated' or 'went along' with the ancien régime for such a long period, with only small deserted islands of resistance,1 complexifies the memory landscape and how we see it historically. Not many individuals, and certainly not society, seem ready to gaze in the mirror and face the-perhaps ugly/unpleasant/confrontational-reflection of their past selves. One such uneasy memoryscape, mired in myth and sentiment, is the use of forced labour and abuse of (political) prisoners in the detention camps in the uranium-rich mines in the Jáchymov region in the 1950s and early 1960s. Sixty years on we traced-while wandering and wondering-some of the visible and invisible artefacts of the camps, as well as public as private memories about what happened there. As with other atrocity sites, with passing time, some of the memories and physicalities of this troubled past have been purposefully hidden, destroyed and forgotten to be later rediscovered, elevated and cultivated; some were repurposed; and others just left in nature's oblivion to age and slowly disappear. With this essay we do not aim to conceptualise and theorise. Rather, we critically and creatively raise and explore questions of what of the violent past is being remembered (or not), by whom, where and how. We do so by (i) offering our visual and sensual reflections on the aesthetics of the remaining physicalities of the camps during our stay in the Jáchymov area in the summer of 2020; and (ii) engaging with (oral) histories, museal narratives and the public record.2 330 2

Ski Resorts and Spas in Grim Mountains
Bordering Germany in northwest Czechia, Jáchymov normally is a popular retreat. After Marie Sklodowska Curie discovered radium in the ore originating from the greater Jáchymov area at the end of the 19th century, the little town became known for its unique spa facilities; since then locally sourced radon has been used to treat rheumatism and vascular diseases. Already in the 16th century, Jáchymov-at the time the second most populous township in the Kingdom of Bohemia, right after Prague-thrived because of its intensive mining industry. The local nobility mined silver and minted coins, which were known as 'tolars' (coining the word 'dollar'). If there were not the covid-19 pandemic at the time of our visit in the summer of 2020, the town would have been most probably flocked by patients and tourists, who are attracted by fancy ski resorts and the many beautiful hiking trails that meander through the lush Krušné hory-the Ore Mountains in English, but meaning 'Hard' or 'Grim' Mountains in Czech.
Against the background of its picturesque decor and its flourishing past, Jáchymov is also known for much darker times as narrated in the museum at the town's centre square. Right before World War ii in 1938, according to the controversial Munich Agreement,3 Jáchymov was annexed by Nazi Germany. During the war, Soviet captives were put to work there to harvest uranium, which was used for Nazi military research. Forced into hard labour, the Russian-speaking war prisoners were interned in different encampments in the thick woodlands. The men subsisted in gated communities, overseen by timber watchtowers; they were always a walking distance away from the mines. Post-wwii-and after cleansing the area from German remnants-the Czechoslovak government retained the lucrative camps. In 1945 it signed a secret accord with the ussr, even expanding the mines; still to yield uranium-but this time to be sent to the ussr for its nuclear weapons research. After the Communist takeover in 1948, the entire area surrounding the mines of Jáchymov, Příbram and Horní Slavkov became a 'no-go zone' . It was closed off to the public; any highly 3 The Munich Agreement was signed, without the presence of the Czechoslovak government, by Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France on 29 September 1938. The German, Italian, British and French representatives agreed to cede areas of Czechoslovakia bordering Germany, the so-called Sudetenland, including its population, agriculture and industry, to the Third Reich-while some other disputed areas were also transferred to Hungary and Poland. As a result, over 1/5 of Czechoslovak territory and a quarter of the population was lost. See K. McDermott: Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945-1989, A Political and Social History (Palgrave, London, 2015 via free access 'the inside'; men built their own 'barracks' , each neatly placed next to the other-using the timber that also naturally surrounded them. Other sites, closer to the inhabited world, were located in existing buildings. Concrete walls, not a dense forest, made it more difficult for prisoners to escape and for the public to see inside. Within the 'camps' , circumstances were oftentimes brutal, like in the five tnp s around Jáchymov and Příbram areas.9 Apart from the 'regular' tnp s, the regime also ran a special branch of correctional labour camps ('nápravné pracovní tábory' , npt). Between 1949 and 1962 npt camps held political-(convicted for crimes against the state in the State Court's show trials),10 retributive-(Nazi collaborators convicted by the extraordinary people's courts)11 and ordinary-(criminals, murderers and thieves convicted by normal courts) prisoners. According to historian Jiří Padevět, npt s strikingly resembled Nazi concentration camps: wooden barracks, double layered (at times triple layered) barb wire, watch towers, armed guards and tiny isolation 'correction rooms' for misbehaving prisoners.12 Like the Nazi-lagers, these places were run by a macabre social system, including prisoners guarding and oftentimes mistreating other prisoners like 'kapos ' .13 In total, there were 422 camps and labour correctional facilities,14 but numbers on their detainee population and casualties vary widely. General estimates, however, hold that between 1948 and 1954 the tnp's held around 20 000 people.15 Likewise, the numbers of inmates in the 18 correctional labour camps around Jáchymov, Příbram and Horní Slavkov (see Table 1)16 varied depending on the level of repression and increasing demands for work force: in 1949 there were 'only' 209 prisoners; at the peak of the Stalinist repression in 1953 almost 15 000 individuals were held there.17 A poster in the Jáchymov museum states 9 In 1951 some of the tnp s were transformed into correctional labour camps.

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that there were in total 186 000 persons 'imprisoned in tnp's and concentration camps' . According to the same poster, 15 726 individuals 'violently lost lives in prisons and camps' , while scholars estimate that around 3000 to 4000 political prisoners perished as a result of maltreatment and torture.18 In what now is dubbed the 'Czech Gulag' ,19 the 18 camps around Jáchymov, Horní Slavkov and Příbram were among the most notorious. Living standards were largely suboptimal. Inmates were untrained, unfit and unequipped for hard, slave-like labour-some, such as intellectuals, professors, civil servants, priests or students, had never worked with their hands before.20 Unshielded internees had to handle radioactive materials. Drinking water was scarce and was often sourced from the toxic mines.21 Next to these dismal circumstances, there was violence and humiliation; prisoners basically depended on the will of camp commanders to constrain abusive guards and kapos.22 Histories about the camps vary tremendously. There are accounts that describe bearable conditions (Eliáš I, Bytíz) while others talk about the camps as deadly (Rovnost, Nikolaj, Barbora).23 During the Prague Spring in the late 1960s, political prisoners started referring to themselves as mukl ('muž určený k likvidaci'-man earmarked for liquidation) and used tropes such as 'Jáchymov concentration camps' or 'liquidation camps' .24 Generally, there has been extensive mythological discourse about the uranium camps while independent, more or less objective, scholarly investigations have started to surface only in recent years.25 From what we gather each camp must have comprised a world on its own, with its own dynamics, whilst along the way life probably changed as much as the composition of inmates.26

Gate Towards Freedom
After the last camps were closed down in the early 1960s, the regime demolished nearly all physical traces of their existence. To track down the few visible remnants and gauge how they are being represented and memorialised, if at all,27 we trekked through Jáchymov and its surrounding hills in the summer of 2020. The town's lower part is encircled by fancy neo-classical spa hotels. On the road to the St. Joachim church on Jáchymov's main square one passes by more derelict buildings, deserted non-stop bars and abandoned tobacco shops and casinos. Old things gradually make place for new things. Apart from the mid-summer construction works on the main road, which dissects the town in half, Jáchymov was deserted, sleepy, quiet. Right next to St. Joachim church, opposite to the museum, stands a memorial. It is the town's most prominent and visible lieu de mémoire to the victims of communism. Designed by sculptor Roman Podrázský ) the commemorative space is titled Way of the Cross towards Freedom-'Křížová cesta ke svobodě' . Its creation in 1996 was demanded by the Confederation of Political Prisoners (cpp). We observe here a clear politics of memory at play. The non-mentioning of other prisoners (and civilians), who also suffered undeniable hardship, exposes the line drawn between political prisoners and the complex victimhood of prisoners of war (including former perpetrators), retribution prisoners and the ordinary correctional prisoners. On the market of compassion for past harms, victims compete for recognition, and in order to be recognised one must be visible, noticeable and signposted.28 Yet, the monument could be also understood more inclusively. A sandstone sculpture located right in front of the yellowish basilica, 'The Gate towards Freedom' , depicts broken bars tumbling on a man's physique on one side, and on a woman's body on the other. The years 1948-1989 are inscribed at the bottom-while the camps were only operational until 1961 and only men were detained. Walking up to the Gate, we wandered pass fifteen large stones. Each bears the name of a camp-but it is ambiguous why certain sites were omitted. Every boulder carries some unique symbol-such as barb wire, chains, thorns, Judas' purse, candle, springs and tears, flowers, roses, a halter-leaving it for the spectator to imagine camp life and contemplate the depicted symbolism of each of the included camps.

Jáchymovské Peklo-'Jáchymov's Hell'
From the church square also starts 'Jáchymov's Hell' , an 8 kilometre trek in the surrounding mountains. Created in 2001 by the ccp, the former Mining Union Barbora, the municipality and the Karlovy Vary tourist club, the walk's aim is to educate tourists about 'the horrors of the labour camps' .29 Crisscrossing through steep, green, forestry slopes, trekkers trail a path along places-some virtually empty perhaps because of covid-19 restrictions in place when we were there-where camps and mines had existed. Up the stairs, on the church's right, is the first halt: the still operative 'Svornost' (Concord) mine.
Nowadays, the facility extracts radon-enriched water for the spas. For tourists, the company exhibits a refurbished rail transport cart bearing a hammer and sickle. Back in the greyish 1950s, it could hardly have been so polished and clean. Close-by, up the steep hill, are the remains of the Svornost camp: some stones, overgrown by grass and bushes and the leftovers of a 'correction room' . A plaque informs that the gloomy, bunker-like, underground place had served as a holding for prisoners whom guards considered to have misbehaved. However, when we later in the week talked to Luboš Modrovič, a former political prisoner and our local source who is a historian by experience, we learned that the actual site probably had been a storage room-using its darkness and coldness to preserve food stock-and not a cell. Regardless of the authenticity of this particular structure, historians confirm that these 'prisons in prisons' were indeed used in some of the camps.30 Like the cave, curators recreated other camp physicalities. Their aesthetic is somewhat caricatural for how we imagine these spaces of internment must have looked like. Deeper into the forest we passed by a wooden watch tower; barb wire fences are neatly positioned along the walking paths (see Figure  1)-with cobbles, mud and a slow water stream coming from the hill. This was the daily route prisoners took to go to 'work' . For today's tourist-wearing sportswear and carrying a backpack with snacks and supplies-the experience is an uneasy mélange of comfortably enjoying the beautiful nature and thinking about an ugly past.
Much like other curated sites of past atrocity across the globe-but quite surprisingly unlike the representation of the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt, located just over 100 km from Jáchymov-the narrative weaves in features of other world historical affronts into the specific, local dreads. Like elsewhere, the trek's curators tenaciously seek to entice memories about Auschwitz. On top of a hill at Svornost we stumble upon sign boards. 'Prací ke svobodě' , 'Zakázané pásmo' they say in bold-Arbeit Macht Frei and Forbidden Area. Modrovič told us such insignia were actually not placed at this spot 70 years ago. At other places close by, like at Nikolaj camp, historians maintain that such texts were indeed written on camps' entry gates.31 Whether factually correct or not, tourists are enticed to see the structures and symbols on display through the commemorative iconography of the Holocaust. Images of oppressive Nazi concentration camps and language are summoned to help visitors memorise the crimes of communism (Figure 2). It works to some extent, but it can also spark confusion, paradoxes, disconcertment-in some At the top of another hill used to be the camp Nikolaj. But apart from a recent plaque several hundred metres away, there is no trace whatsoever that prisoners lived here (Figure 3). It seems that dealing with the past was left to nature and it simply overgrew and overpowered the haunted memories. The lives and histories of detainees became obscured by the force of nature. Memories of violence, oppression and suffering became undergrowth. We stood there, in the middle of the forest, imagining the looks, the sounds and smells of the earthed past. On the open spot surrounded by the tall green trees and hidden in the grass, the only concrete evidence we find is a couple of indigestible iron columns and concrete. Home of middle-aged trees, the space is now serene, soothing. Its only inhabitants are now wild boar, foxes and birds.
The story of hardship, imprisonment and violence vanishes. The past is bygone. In the 1950s, however, Nikolaj held around 800 inmates.32 In their memories, Nikolaj lives on as a sad, painful and angry reminiscence of what must have been a deplorable place. Some former prisoners speak about Nikolaj as 'a liquidation camp' .33 Camp-commandos (themselves retribution and criminal prisoners) had bullied, beaten and tortured political prisoners.34 Notorious was the beating commando's chief, Břetislav Jeníček, who during the war had led the collaborative organisation 'Vlajka' (Flag) and was an active Gestapoconfidant. His infamy stems from his violent brutality against his co-prisoners. After his release from the camp in 1954, following the 1953 amnesty, and well into the 1960s, Jeníček, true to his reputation, became an energetic collaborator 32 Ibid. 33 Pinerová, supra note 4, p. 71. 34 Padevět, supra note 5, pp. 55-56. Jeníček's 'commando' not only bullied and beat political prisoners, but had, according to Padevět, de facto similar powers as the camp leadership, including a possibility to place detainees for indeterminate time into the correctional room.36 In between the arbitrary violence inflicted by the kapos, like Jeníček, and guards, on normal 'work' days, life was not easy either. During daytime, Nikolaj's prisoners laboured at the Eduard mine, which is about 1000 metres uphill. As the Eduard mine and the camp were connected by a public road, prisoners had to walk in a formation called the 'Russian (or also Jáchymov's) bus';37 five in one row, and one row after another; the men were tied together by a hemp or steel rope. Former prisoner Zdeněk Mandrholec is quoted at placards on the roadside, saying that '[h]e counted it and he walked in such way over 1140 kilometres' . History's irony and in fact capitalism's disregard of the dark stories is that very near the area where Eduard was located is now a sports complex with paintball facilities, Nordic walking and a biathlon shooting range.
From Eduard, the trek descends pass the former Eliáš I, Eliáš ii and Rovnost camps. Rovnost (Egality) was founded in 1949 at a former labour camp created for Wehrmacht soldiers and ss members-some of whom remained there well after 1949.38 Over its gate hung the sign 'Soviet Union, our ideal' .39 By the end of 1950, more than 1200 prisoners were detained there.40 František Paleček-say historians and former prisoners-was amongst the cruellest and most sadistic of the camp's commanders and guards;41 he beat captives over their fingers with a metal cable, or with key chains against their faces, and he coerced prisoners to stand outside in the frost of the night. Prisoners remember that one of them was forced to stand outside in the freezing cold for 50 hours, until 'his face turned black' .42 Some recall how Paleček extinguished cigarettes on peoples' bodies. The atrocities often left the victims unconscious.43 As if the abuse was not enough, Paleček also had, according to prisoners, forced them, for his own pleasure and whims, to build a brick, miniature castle. Through its ruins in the forest, the contours of the so-called 'Paleček's castle' are still clearly via free access discernible. Where Rovnost was located, close to the thumb-nail castle, there is also a much larger ruin of the so-called 'řetízkárna' building, which used to be a changing room for prisoners into and out of mining gear. Meanwhile, much of the area of the former camp is being slowly but surely taken over by newly built residential houses and recreational cabins. At this site, the overgrowth of the memoryscape has been manmade.
Jáchymov's Hell trek is prudently curated and narrated. After a successful crowdsourcing campaign by the cpp, Jáchymov authorities, former prisoners, historians and Jáchymov's museum personnel, the trail was refurbished and updated in 2015.44 By invoking the Holocaust, it now offers sightseers an experience of re-imagining torment, while also telling a cautiously crafted narrative. And indeed, the imagery of these dark days long past and the story of the ordeals of thousands of unnamed victims is meant to make visitors pause and stop, perhaps shock even. Contrasts could not be fiercer: we passed through this dark history on a sunny day, seeing the watchtowers against a canvas of rolling hills and a blue sky-but also solitary; the covid-19 pandemic kept other visitors away.

'Discover, Play and Relax!'
Besides the camps showcased at Jáchymov's Hell trek, there had been various other camps in the region. Most of them are disremembered, now used for other more current or future oriented purposes and pleasures. In the area of Horní Slavkov, for example, the grounds of Camp xii are now a forest park and children's playground-funded by the European Union. Bordering a monotonous residential area with low flat buildings-on a strip with parked cars and coloured cans for separated garbage-a billboard at the entrance welcomes visitors and invites them to 'Discover, a rainy, grey, warm summer morning. Only a couple of people-young and old-were walking their dogs there. Otherwise, the park was deserted and the empty monkey bars felt sort of out of place.
We tried to find some relics of the camp. And hidden among the pathways and trees we found some. At the outskirt border of the park, a lonely column, left from the camp's palisade, is covered in the thick bushes.48 A bit further, just outside the park in the meadow, we discovered a massive piece of concrete in the tall grass. It appears we stumbled upon a leftover of Camp xii sewage system ( Figure 4). Now, the hole is filled with empty beer cans, bottles and street litter.
However, the camp inmates' ordeals are not left in total obscurity. These memories are kept somewhere else, at the other side of town. At the local cemetery on a hill overlooking Horní Slavkov, there is a memorial desk. It commemorates five prisoners, who were shot dead when they had tried to escape Camp xii in 1951.49 Just opposite the wooden cross is a well-maintained memorial to Soviet heroes who died during the 'Great Patriotic War' .
From Camp xii and the competing memorials, we continue our journey, tracing other seemingly forgotten camps, left to gracefully (or disgracefully) age and disappear with the passage of time. Interestingly, at times, and in contrast to Jáchymov's Hell trek, we located and found some quite substantial physical traces of former camps. Among these is Svatopluk ( Figure 5). Apart from birds singing, what remains is silence. It is nothing like the carefully curated and manicured Hell's track. The old Communist regime had not cared to destroy the premises, but it had just abandoned it. The new liberal democratic regime, or anyone really, has not cared to elevate the ruins to an official site of remembrance. Here, time and nature have taken over; the buildings are gradually disintegrating and disappearing, trees are maturing in the buildings. Only time will tell how long this site continues to be overgrown by 50 Padevět, supra note 5, p. 25. tall grass and green bushes, outgrown by aged trees, or covered in things people want to throw away and forget.

Red Tower of Death
On our last day we drove to Ostrov, just south of Jáchymov, where we met Luboš Modrovič (the amateur historian mentioned above). He is one of the active representatives of the now abolished Karlovy Vary section of the cpp. Modrovič, a middle-aged gentleman, met us at the fenced side of a road that leads to the still functioning Ostrov prison-when we passed we saw prisoners crossing the street to work their shift in the factory opposite the jailhouse. A former political prisoner himself in the 1980s (he refused to enter military service), the sympathetic and extremely talkative Modrovič was lucidly passionate and very well-informed of Jáchymov's history. But next to giving us entry into his oral histories he also had the key to a rusty door of a large concrete enclosure. Modrovič took us inside the premises of former camp Vykmanov, which prisoners remembered as one of the most brutal ones. Living conditions had been rigid and the regime was rough.51 Also, at this location is the so-called Red Tower of Death ( Figure 6). The seven-story redbrick tower is on the unesco World Heritage list and there is a huge road sign advertising it. Surrounded by high concrete walls, and difficult to see from the outside, the Tower-with its two accompanying factory halls and railway track-stood tall in the middle of a large piece of land against the clear blue mid-summer skies. From the outside, it looked very well maintained and taken care of. It had been built and used to 'smash' and sort uranium. The hazardous substance was then directly sent off by train to the ussr. Modrovič tells us how prisoners were forced to work with the highly radioactive rocks and powder; they had no protective equipment, made long shifts and constantly breathed in toxic dust. Besides bad nutrition, cancer took the lives of a large majority of labourers-hence the Tower's grim nickname.
After Vykmanov camp was padlocked in 1956, the Škoda company took over the area to assemble trolley buses and used the pylon as an administrative building. In 2008 the car manufacturer sold the entire property to the cpp for the symbolic prize of 1 Kč (approx. 0.03 eur). Modrovič led us into the facility. In one of the two former factory halls-which could also be the perfect venue for a Berlin-style minimalist industrial hipster's food court-he operates a sort of personal, make-shift but well-maintained museum. It is his personal tribute to the political prisoners, whose (oral) histories he has been collecting. The walls are covered by do-it-yourself noticeboards showcasing the stories of prisoners (but also of some guards and commanders and regional historical figures). Pasted next to each other, their biographies are printed on A4 white papers in dense blurring text. Now and then they are illustrated with a black and white picture. In the 'museum' one can also see some of the tools prisoners were using, a heavy piece of uranium and dissident cartoons and magazines from the 1950s. The aim, Modrovič told us, is once all the legal quarrels are settled over the ownership of the Tower,52 to make the museum official and use it to educate youth and school children about the history of the area. However, us being there, being able to see and smell not through a screen but 'for real' was strangely elating. All the pre-pandemic rush and hurly burly were gone and the town and its beautiful landscape were absolutely peaceful. It was eerie and soothing at the same time. The standstill, peace and quiet, however, allowed for it to be observed, to be felt and reflected on in a very unique moment of serenity. And we wondered whether the Jáchymov's trek with its powerfully evocative stories and memories, recorded on the placards carefully situated along the path by its curators, had been more crowded, more visited and more seen before the pandemic. And if so, how would the aesthetics of the place change with tourists (some coming for history, some for spas or non-stop bars) lining up on the narrow paths? And by the same token, will the visitors, post-covid-19, come back? What will the future hold for such, at the moment virtually deserted, physical places of memory of the old suffering after the pandemic ends? Will such memorial sites also become virtualised,53 and thus frozen in time oblivious to any overgrowth and ageing, for anyone from anywhere to 'visit' from the comfort of their living rooms to take a virtual tour and remember? And what would such virtualization mean for the experience of 'virtual visitors' and their sensations and feelings, which physical memory sites of past atrocities are meant to elicit and provoke?54