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Archaeological excavations are currently underway in Prague’s Letna Park: the foundations of one of the barracks were discovered when the city council decided to dig a pond at the site. Talks about the construction of the monument svoboda.org.
Historians had known of the existence of this camp for a long time, but they did not expect to find the foundations of one of the underground barracks, as well as the building where the camp’s kitchen and dining room were located. These buildings were compared to the ground in the mid-1960s.
“I would call this complex typical,” says Czech archaeologist Jan Hasil. – Similar camps were established in many European countries at that time, the result of a crisis caused by two antagonistic ideologies, the Nazi and the Communist. Similar complexes were built in the Third Reich when it was waging all-out war. We know these camps in all the big industrial plants or mining companies. Forced labor was used whenever it concerned objects important to industry or the regime: bridges, tunnels, railways, etc. In other words, it is a typical field of work.
Taken from the movie “Monument to love and friendship”. Construction of monuments
In this place, where excavations are now taking place, several simple constructions were erected. Now that we have started studying these remains, we have realized that we are talking about temporary structures. Such complexes are characterized by the fact that they were usually installed in places where there are no historical buildings. The field was established near the site where the Stalin monument was built. The camp was guarded, there was a fence here. Three barracks were built, but if necessary, two more could be built as planned in the original project. I would call it an oversight, that was the attitude towards the people who worked here. “
Former prisoner Jan Decker was admitted to the Auxiliary Labor Battalion and was thrown into the construction of the Stalin Monument after his imprisonment for participating in a resistance group. This group, by the way, was created by the Czechoslovak KGB itself: members of the group allegedly planned anti-communist actions. Thus, the security agents interrogated and sent to prison some of the participants in a demonstration that took place on February 25, 1948 in Prague Castle. The students then demanded that President Edward Beneš oppose the conversion of Czechoslovakia into a communist state.
After serving his sentence, Decker was sent to build a monument to Stalin – he repaired concrete mixers. After the Velvet Revolution, he led the Union of Former Czechoslovakian Labor Camp Prisoners for many years. He also shared his memories with historians, so the existence of the camp itself became known. It was not known only that the barracks in the camp had not been completely destroyed.
“Monument of Love and Friendship”
The finding of the Czech archaeologists is even more surprising because it is a forced labor camp that was installed in the very center of Prague, in the area of what is now Letna Park. From here, it is only a ten minute walk to Prague Castle. However, not a single photograph of the camp has survived, apart from some air photos and construction design documentation found in the archive.
Taken from the movie “Monument to love and friendship”. In the red circle, the headquarters of the natural camp.
The image of the barracks appeared only in the footage of the propaganda film with the Orwellian title “Monument of love and friendship”, which spoke of the construction stages of the monument. The film begins with images of oils in bloom, a symbolic hint of May 1945, when Prague was occupied by the Red Army.
VIDEO: Czechoslovakian film propaganda “Monument to love and friendship” (1955)
Construction of a monument to Stalin in Prague began in late 1949, a year after the Communist Party came to power in Czechoslovakia. At the center of the sculptural composition was Joseph Stalin, and behind him were representatives of the Soviet people (worker, scientist, collective farmer and Red Army soldier) and representatives of Czechoslovakia (worker, peasant, innovator and soldier).
Two figures symbolize specific people: journalist Julius Fučík and breeder Ivan Mičiurin. The monument was inaugurated in 1955, after the death of Stalin and a year before Nikita Khrushchev read a famous report at the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which crowned the cult of Stalin. Six years after the report, the monument was demolished: when it was blown up, high fences were built around it so that no one could immortalize the moment the monument was destroyed, but the clouds of smoke and dust that rose into the sky were visible from various parts of the city.
“Tail for meat”
“The construction of this monument, which began in 1949, has become a prestigious task of the state. A state commission was established for the construction of the monument. It was chaired by Antonín Zápotocký, president of Czechoslovakia after Clement Gottwaldi. We see, then, that this was the task of the highest party leadership. The monument to Stalin was to symbolize the high level reached by the regime. It was a massive engineering structure. The stone with which the monument was made was brought from the north of the country. So it was also an impressive logistics operation. For a long time, a place for the monument was sought on the side of a hill (so that the monument was visible from afar). This determined not only the ideological, but also technical aspects of the implementation of this idea: where to place the sculpture. The connection of the massive pedestal of the monument is also related to it, ”says Jan Hasil.
Taken from the movie “Monument to love and friendship”. Construction of monuments
Today, only one pedestal remains of the Prague monument, which the locals called “meat queue”: its granite stairs lead down the hill to the Vltava. A giant metronome was built on it in 1991 by the kinetic sculptor Vratislav Karel Novák. The metronome symbolizes time, reminiscent of the past. According to Jan Hasil, the pedestal has become an ideological artifact, and current excavations of the remains of the forced labor camp complement it in a historical context. The archaeologist says that the area of the barracks was 180 square meters: “It is like two medium-sized apartments in the city, and the project envisaged that 38 people could live in that space.”
VIDEO: Prague metronome, which takes the place of the statue of J. Stalin
“Now we are discussing with historians who were the people who were used by the regime to build the monument,” says Jan Hasil. – Documentation from the late 1950s and early 1960s found in the archives indicates that they were teams of people made up of politically unreliable individuals who were unable to perform military service due to a medical condition. Apparently, they were later replaced by brigades formed in various companies and the Armed Forces, trying to demonstrate their interest in the implementation of the project. A project that was supposed to symbolize the regime itself. “
Wikipedia.org Photo / Monument to Joseph Stalin in Prague (around 1960)
Buried underground
Of the three barracks, only the base of one remains, so archaeological excavations are being carried out here. It turned out that the floor was made of wooden planks and small objects and debris fell between them. As a result, archaeologists have been able to find combs and buttons: there is a woman among them, which means that there were also female prisoners who erected the monument. Poultry bones were also detected. These small finds help to understand what life was like in the camp.
“It is not yet possible to determine exactly how long the field has functioned as a residence for” politically unreliable “construction participants. The active construction phase took place in 1951-1953 and also employed skilled workers. Among them, stonemasons who worked granite considered very valuable. We know that at the time the construction management complained about the lack of places to sleep and its unsuitability for life. She asked to deliver the hotel in Prague and received that hotel. It is possible that in 1953 the The labor camp ceased to perform its original function, but it is known that the dining room and kitchen continued to function.
In 1954, when the last works were carried out, the restoration of the park landscape began at the camp site. At that time, the buildings were dismantled. And it is done scrupulously. This is also typical of these fields of work. The regime itself erased the traces of the crime and did so with great care. This was also the case here. A large amount of earth was brought to Zion, which filled not only the territory of the camp, but also the entire space around it, up to the pedestal of the monument. Everything was buried underground, and thus the memory of this place was erased ”, says a Czech archaeologist.
Free labor
Historians who comment on this archaeological investigation speak of the so-called auxiliary labor battalions. In Czechoslovakia, reference was most often made to construction groups, to which the communist regime sent politically unreliable students and professors, clergymen, aristocrats and their descendants who did not leave the country after the communists came to power, and large and small landowners who gave it up. .
Photo from Wikipedia.org / Explosion of a monument (1962)
These battalions were classified as military, but their members were not considered military and the regime used them as unpaid labor.
Similar compounds existed in the Soviet Union and were called military building units. They were used to build large facilities: factories, bridges, power plants and included “politically unreliable elements” or convicts. Construction squads, despite their tragic history, have not been abolished in modern Russia either. They are still part of the Russian army.
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