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In Bohemia (Kladno), in Morsvia (Olomoug and Novy Jicin)
in Slovakia (Bratislava and Komarno) special camps have been set up
under military supervision, for seminarians ana young priests in draft
age as well as retigkeux certain groups of religious who refused to
leave their orders. They are drafted into the Army, but, instead of
being admitted into regular military units where their influence is
feared, they are grouped in those special labor batailions.e ihey are
used in the building of factories and of military constwuctions, in
heavy industry, in mining ani especially in the factories of the
Kladno coal district. Unlike regular draftees, they are given no hope
to be released after the compulsory two gears of service. It is made
absolutely clear to them that they will stay on in the labor camp, unless
they should decide to enter a governmental seminary anda beoome a
communistic “patriotic priest",
In Moravec (Moravia) a camp for old and sick privcsts and nuns
has been established. Their number amounts to approximately 300, most
of them wwers60 years of ages They are used for lighter worke
A punishment camp for priests and religious exists in Zeliv
in Bohemia. It has now about 100 inmates, labeled as “inworrectibles",
and treated in the hardest and most cruel waye
The largest .camp for priests and r:ligious is located in the
contact is allwwed with the outside world. Over two-thousand priests,
most of them from Slovakia, are detained here and used in hard labore
It is supposed that several hundred priests from Hungary and probably
also from Rumania have been recently taken to this same campe The
exact nature of the work performed by the pr&goners is kept as deep
secrete It is most likely to be in the line of forestry and mininge
Besides these exclusively “ecclesiastical” camps priests and
religious are also to be found in the general, nuns in the women's campSe
Two-hundred religious, mostly Jesuits, for example work in the Jachymov
uranium mines; an important group of priests in the Moravska Ostrava
coal district.
The exact number of priests, theologians, brothers and nuns
actsaliy working today in Czecho-blovakia's forced labor units could
not be established. According to most conservative estimates, their
total number reaches a minkmum of 5.000 detained in special camps and
about 2.000 more i general camps and in prisons.
Gene ral CAMPS e
The most important among general forced lsbor camps in eéeekae¬
Slovakia is the famous umanium mine camp of Jachymove Organized and
supervised by the Czech Secret State Police, it is under direct order
from Praguce Nearly all the many thousand prisoners working in these
mines, have been sentenced for political reasons: for collaboration with
the Nazis, for op ,osition against the people's democracy or for “sabotage
of the official economic plane ‘to these political prisoners are
associated a very small percentage of ordinary criminals ana a-sociáa
elementss Several large separate camps are being establishedj each one
in the vicinity of one of the mines. The barracks and the entrance to
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