Pankrác Prison
Encyclopedia
Pankrác Prison, officially Prague Pankrác Remand Prison (Vazební věznice Praha Pankrác in Czech
), is a prison
in Prague
, Czech Republic
. It is located southeast of Prague city centre in Pankrác
, not far from Pražského povstání
metro
station on Line C
.
and the Vltava River. The site for the new prison was out of city limits, amidst fields above Nusle
suburb, in the time of its construction. Nevertheless, the expanding Prague encompassed the prison within several decades. A huge building of court was added to the facility in 1930s. During Nazi German occupation
in 1939–1945 thousands of Czech people, from members of the Resistance
to black marketeers, were detained here before having been sent to execution, to another prison within Germany
or to concentration camp. In spring 1943 the Nazi Germans started carrying out executions directly inside the facility itself, where three cells had been adapted for this purpose. Between April 5, 1943 and April 26, 1945 a total of 1,079 people were beheaded by guillotine
in Pankrác. The three rooms used for this bloody purpose (colloquially
referred to as the sekyrárna, or axe room in Czech) have been preserved (including the execution device), and serve as memorial that is occasionally accessible to schools and public. http://sporilov.info/view.php?cisloclanku=2004113001 In the last decades before the abolition of capital punishment
in Czechoslovakia
, the vast majority http://www.mvcr.cz/policie/udv/sesity/sesit2/sesit2.doc of executions (by hanging
) took place here, the last in 1989.
a house of detention
for accused
males,
and partly as a prison for sentenced
males. The facility is designed
for 858 inmates, of whom 468 are on
remand and 390 are serving terms of
imprisonment. Prisoners are accommodated
in rooms with an average capacity
of three beds, the largest containing
ten beds. The prison premises also
contain a Czech Prison Service hospital,
serving the inmates, with a capacity of
111, as well as the Pankrác Memorial, http://institut-tisk.vscr.cz/?cl_id=16
containing an exhibition on the Prison
Service. The number of prison staff is 568 (2006).
:
Perpetrators of war crimes and Nazi collaborators
:
Victims of communist
purge
s:
Notorious criminals:
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
), is a prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
. It is located southeast of Prague city centre in Pankrác
Pankrác
Pankrác is a neighborhood of Prague, Czech Republic. It is located south of the city centre on the hills of the right bank of the Vltava River and is part of the Prague 4 district as a deal of Nusle quarter. The name derives from the local baroque initially very old church of St Pancras, which is...
, not far from Pražského povstání
Pražského povstání
Pražského povstání is a Prague Metro station. It is located below Hrdinů Square in Pankrác district and belongs to the oldest section of Line C opened in 1974....
metro
Rapid transit
A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...
station on Line C
Line C (Prague Metro)
Line C is a line on the Prague Metro. It crosses the right-bank half of the city center in the north-south directions and turns to the east at both ends of the line. It is the system's oldest and most used line, being opened in 1974 and transporting roughly 26,900 persons per hour in the peak. The...
.
History
The prison was built in 1885–1889 in order to replace the obsolete St Wenceslas Prison (Svatováclavská trestnice), which used to stand between Charles SquareCharles Square
Charles Square is a city square in the New Town of Prague, Czech Republic. It is one of the largest squares in the world and very likely the largest medieval square in Europe. Founded in 1348 as the main square of the New Town by Charles IV, it was known as Dobytčí trh from the 15th century and...
and the Vltava River. The site for the new prison was out of city limits, amidst fields above Nusle
Nusle
Nusle is a district of Prague, created in 1922). Part of Nusle is in Prague 2 while most is in Prague 4. Nusle are located south of the city centre in Nuselské údolí on the Botič brook. There are interesting a rustically building of Nusle Town Hall from the year 1908, and a late old Nusle brewery...
suburb, in the time of its construction. Nevertheless, the expanding Prague encompassed the prison within several decades. A huge building of court was added to the facility in 1930s. During Nazi German occupation
German occupation of Czechoslovakia
German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland, under terms outlined by the Munich Agreement. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's pretext for this effort was the alleged privations suffered by...
in 1939–1945 thousands of Czech people, from members of the Resistance
Resistance during World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns...
to black marketeers, were detained here before having been sent to execution, to another prison within Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
or to concentration camp. In spring 1943 the Nazi Germans started carrying out executions directly inside the facility itself, where three cells had been adapted for this purpose. Between April 5, 1943 and April 26, 1945 a total of 1,079 people were beheaded by guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
in Pankrác. The three rooms used for this bloody purpose (colloquially
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
referred to as the sekyrárna, or axe room in Czech) have been preserved (including the execution device), and serve as memorial that is occasionally accessible to schools and public. http://sporilov.info/view.php?cisloclanku=2004113001 In the last decades before the abolition of capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, the vast majority http://www.mvcr.cz/policie/udv/sesity/sesit2/sesit2.doc of executions (by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
) took place here, the last in 1989.
The present
According to an official report http://ad.vscr.cz/news_files/Czech_Prisons_2006.pdf of Prison Service the Pankrác Prison currently serves asa house of detention
Detention (imprisonment)
Detention is the process when a state, government or citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to criminal charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property...
for accused
Criminal accusation
A criminal accusation is the process of declaring one's belief in another's liability for that other's criminal action. A criminal accusation may be informally made through a declaration made to the public at large or by the filing of a formal accusation in a court of law by a person legally...
males,
and partly as a prison for sentenced
Sentence (law)
In law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime...
males. The facility is designed
for 858 inmates, of whom 468 are on
remand and 390 are serving terms of
imprisonment. Prisoners are accommodated
in rooms with an average capacity
of three beds, the largest containing
ten beds. The prison premises also
contain a Czech Prison Service hospital,
serving the inmates, with a capacity of
111, as well as the Pankrác Memorial, http://institut-tisk.vscr.cz/?cl_id=16
containing an exhibition on the Prison
Service. The number of prison staff is 568 (2006).
Some people imprisoned or executed in Pankrác
Anti-Nazi ResistanceCzech resistance to Nazi occupation
Czech resistance to German Nazi occupation during World War II is a scarcely documented subject, by and large a result of little formal resistance and an effective German policy that deterred acts of resistance or annihilated organizations of resistance...
:
- Alois EliášAlois EliášAlois Eliáš was a Czechoslovak general and politician. He served as Prime Minister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from April 27, 1939 to September 28, 1941.- Career in 1939-1942 :...
- Vladislav VančuraVladislav VancuraVladislav Vančura was one of the most important Bohemian writers of the 20th century...
- Julius FučíkJulius Fucíkthumb|Julius FucikJulius Fučík was a Czechoslovak journalist, an active member of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , and part of the forefront of the anti-Nazi resistance. He was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the Nazis.- Early life :Julius Fučík was born into a working-class family in...
Perpetrators of war crimes and Nazi collaborators
Collaboration during World War II
Within nations occupied by the Axis Powers, some citizens, driven by nationalism, ethnic hatred, anti-communism, anti-Semitism or opportunism, knowingly engaged in collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II...
:
- Emil HáchaEmil HáchaEmil Hácha was a Czech lawyer, the third President of Czecho-Slovakia from 1938 to 1939. From March 1939, he presided under the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.-Judicial career:...
- Karl Hermann FrankKarl Hermann FrankKarl Hermann Frank was a prominent Sudeten German Nazi official in Czechoslovakia prior to and during World War II and an SS-Obergruppenführer...
- Jan Rys-RozsévačJan Rys-RozsévacJan Rys-Rozsévač was a Czechoslovakian journalist and politician and leader of fascist organisation Vlajka....
- Kurt DaluegeKurt DaluegeKurt Daluege was a German Nazi SS-Oberstgruppenführer and Generaloberst der Polizei as chief of the Ordnungspolizei and ruled the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia as Deputy Protector after Reinhard Heydrich's assassination.-Early life and career:Kurt Daluege, a son of a Prussian state official,...
- Karel ČurdaKarel CurdaKarel Čurda was a Czech World War II soldier from the Czechoslovak army in exile. He was parachuted into the protectorate in 1941 as a member of the sabotage group Out Distance...
Victims of communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
purge
Purge
In history, religion, and political science, a purge is the removal of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, from another organization, or from society as a whole. Purges can be peaceful or violent; many will end with the imprisonment or exile of those purged,...
s:
- Milada HorákováMilada HorákováDr. Milada Horáková was a Czech politician executed by Communists on charges of conspiracy and treason.- Biography :...
- Záviš KalandraZáviš KalandraZáviš Kalandra was a Czechoslovak historian and theorist of literature executed by Communists on charges of conspiracy and treason....
- Vladimír ClementisVladimír ClementisVladimír "Vlado" Clementis was a Slovak minister, politician, lawyer, publicist, literary critic, author and a prominent member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. He married Lída Pátková, a daughter of a branch director of Czech Hypothec Bank in Bratislava, in March 1933. He became a Communist...
- Rudolf MargoliusRudolf MargoliusRudolf Margolius was Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, Czechoslovakia , and a co-defendant in the Slánský trial in November 1952....
- Bedřich ReicinBedrich ReicinBedřich Reicin was a Czechoslovak army officer and politician.Reicin was born into a poor Jewish family...
- Rudolf SlánskýRudolf SlánskýRudolf Slánský was a Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia...
- Otto ŠlingOtto ŠlingOtto Šling was born in Nová Cerekev, a village in south Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire. After World War II, Šling became the Communist Party's Regional Secretary of Brno in Czechoslovakia . In 1952, Šling was sentenced to death at a show trial and then executed...
Notorious criminals:
- Václav MrázekVáclav MrázekVáclav Mrázek was a Czech serial killer who was convicted of murdering seven people. All of his victims were women. His murders were primarily sexually motivated, although he also burgled his victims' homes...
- Olga HepnarováOlga HepnarováOlga Hepnarová was a Czech mass murderer, who in 1973 killed 8 people with a truck. She was convicted and executed in 1975.- Life :...
- Princ DobroshiPrinc DobroshiPrinc Dobroshi .In 1993 he was caught in Norway and in 1994 sentenced to 14 years in prison for heroin trafficking . In a well coordinated operation he escaped from the Ullersmo prison in 1997...