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I remember that at Easter 1952, all the prisoners were ordered to take a bath. After that, we were taken out into the prison courtyard where we had to stand and watch the sun for two hours. The manager punished me with fourteen days of solitary confinement and when I served my time I was punished with another fourteen days. Besides, I was not allowed to receive packages and visits for three months. I was punished for having a prayer-book and the manager explained me that this was the offence called "spreading enemy propaganda". I was in solitary confinement from 1 July to 28 July. The hunger was appalling. The tloor was covered with burnt oil and I was ordered to clean it with a piece of glass.
Later, when I came back to my department, Cimeša held a new meeting for the priests and called us to join the group of priests who had agreed to cooperate with the representatives of the Communist regime. All those who refused to talk about this topic were given hard and exhausting jobs. In summer, between noon and 3 p.m., when the heat was most intense, while the others were resting, we had to push wheel-barrows full of earth or bricks in doubl.e time. The manager's assistant usually watched this torture from his window and often called the guard and ordered him to maintain the prisoners' running pace. I told Sava, one of the guards who was a good man, that I could not run anymore, but he was not in a position to help me because he had to carry out orders. I was on the point of collapse from exhaustion and when I lost consciousness they poured some water on me. After coming to my senses I had to go back to work.
Later on, I was sent to work in the saw- mill, where my task was to load beams and then to the shoe-making workshop where I repaired shoes. The foreman of this workshop was Stipe Knežević from Cernik, a quiet and peaceful man.
My last job was in the tool maker's workshop. I was almost killed there when the large metal lid of the gasoline tank swooped down on me. Amnesty was proclaimed in April 1962. I was the last one to leave the prison, on 6th April, when everybody else had already gone. That day, Savo Lalić, a guard from Kistanja, and a very decent and good man, came into my cell. He took me to the office where a certain Sesarić from Zagreb was waiting for me. He told me: "Ramljak, it's time to say good bye". I replied that we should never have met. He started to explain that a revolution had taken place and that in every revolution mistakes were made. When I went to pick up my clothes I was asked if I intended to be a priest again. My answer was short: "Of course". They were not satisfied and in the end they shook hands with all the prisoners who were leaving the prison that day but they even avoided looking at me".
Exhumation of Corpses and studying Marx's "Capital"
The priest Nikola Soldo was born in the parish of Hrasno, in eastern Hercegovina in 1917. During the Second World War he was the editor of tlze local newspaper "The Croatian Land ", in Petrinja. That is why he was sentenced to a twenty-year prison term and he served fifteen long years in Stara Gradiška. (63)
"When I came to Gradiška, at the end of 1945, I was given the number 1, although I was not the first prisoner in that camp. There were approximately one hundred prisoners before me and the first prisoner was the late Antun Res, a prestigious industrialist from Zagreb. When the first 106 prisoners were released, the management decided to cancel their numbers, so that I was number 1 by pure chance. Thousands of prisoners were curious about prisoner number 1 because they somehow respected that number. At the beginning I worked as a house-and-woodwork painter and our boss was a civilian. Then I worked in the basket-making workshop for six years where I made tables and chairs from osiers. Some jobs were highly exhausting and the worst job was unloading building materials from barges in the Sava port. The River Sava was very low in summer and a very steep path led to the dike. Another path led to the barges so that we were always on the move and carrying heavy loads. We had a chance to rest if someone fell from exhaustion obstructing the passage for the wheel-barrows. A disciplinary battalion was also established consisting of selected prisoners who had to carry various loads by forced marching.
The prison guards put young and strong prisoners at the head who forced the others to move at an exhaustingly rapid pace with fully loaded wheel-barrows.
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