We escaped from a detention cell in 1950. we wanted to go to the West
Stáhnout obrázek
Miloš Viehmann was born on 19 August 1929 in Prague. His father was a high-ranking civil servant at the Provincial Office, and his mother died soon after. His father married for a second time, and from this union, Miloš Viehmann‘s half-sister was born. In Prague, he experienced the arrival of the Germans in 1939, the atmosphere of the Heydrichiad, the uprising and the liberation of the city by the Red Army. At that time, he was already studying at the classical grammar school in Londýnská Street, but in 1946, due to his father‘s job transfer, the family moved to Chomutov, where Miloš graduated in May 1948. He continued his studies at the University of Chemical Technology in Prague. A year later, he refused to submit to political vetting and was expelled from his studies. He went to the Jáchymov region and worked in the uranium mines as a geologist and draughtsman. There, he experienced German prisoners of war and the arrival of the first political prisoners. Under the impression of worsening social conditions and political trials, Viehmann and two friends decided to emigrate. He expected freedom from life in the West and the opportunity to finish university. He and his friends set off through East Germany in 1950, their destination being West Berlin. However, they were detained in the Soviet occupation zone and handed over to the Czechoslovak State Security. During a brutal investigation, in which they were accused of intending to divulge information about the Jáchymov mines to Western intelligence, Viehmann and Josef Chramost managed to escape from their detention cell with great risk and courage. They immediately headed for Cheb, where they intended to cross the state border. Exhausted by the difficult escape, they hid in an old apiary near the border to regain their strength. However, following a report from the owner of the apiary, they were soon arrested and escorted back to Jáchymov. They experienced beatings or a prolonged stay in an underground ice dungeon. Eventually, they were taken to Pankrác Prison, where on 13 September 1950, the State Court in Prague convicted them of treason and espionage. Miloš Viehmann was sentenced to 18 years of hard imprisonment. After his conviction, his father lost his job, and his sister was prevented from attending university for many years. He served his sentence in the Bory prison near Pilsen, where he worked as a feather plucker. He then worked manually in Pardubice on the completion of the women‘s prison, and also did masonry work in the prison in Kutná Hora. Later, he ended up working in uranium mining in the Jáchymov camps Nikolai and Mariánská. In the Nikolai camp, he experienced the escape of ten prisoners. Miloš Viehmann was released in the May 1960 amnesty. For a while, he worked as a miner in the coal mines in the Chomutov region, then he worked manually on land reclamation until he got a long-term job in geological exploration. Throughout the communist period, State Security checked him from time to time through his employers. His memoirs were published in book form in 2021 under the title Above all, do not mention Jáchymov.
