history
1940s
During the Second World War, the Ore Mountains region of Bohemia was annexed into Hitler’s Germany as part of “the Sudetenland” in 1938. In the 1940s, the Nazis established a series of concentration camps in the area in order to supply their nuclear program with uranium ore. Instead of closing these concentration camps at the end of the war, the Red Army merely assumed management of the sites, sending between 5,000 and 6,000 POWs to work in the mines before the Red Cross negotiated their release in 1949.
In that same year, the first 1,135 prisoners were sent to the labor camps at Jáchymov; for a brief period, German POWs and Czechoslovak political prisoners worked side by side under the slogan “Prací Ke Svobodě” (in English: “Work Sets You Free). This motto, a Czech translation of the infamous words over the gates at concentration camps like Auschwitz, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” remained painted over the gates of Jáchymov mines, even as the camps’ Nazi period ended, and the site entered into its Communist era.
1950S
More than 65,000 prisoners passed through Jáchymov’s labor camps in the 1950s. Nearly 70% of them were political prisoners. Under a treaty forced upon the Czechoslovaks by the Soviet Union, these men mined uranium ore for the Soviet nuclear weapons program while subjected to extremely dangerous and inhumane conditions. Many were seriously maimed or sickened by the inhalation of radioactive dust. Around 200 prisoners are known to have been killed in the penal colony at Jáchymov, including 16 would-be escapees who were executed upon their recapture.
From 1949 to 1961, 18 prison complexes served as sources of forced labor for mines in Bohemia. Horní Slavkov, Příbram (near Prague and Pilsen, respectively) and Jáchymov were all sites where prisoners were used as slave laborers, but the Jáchymov complex camps were the largest and most infamous. In this small Bohemian town, thousands of prisoners were subjected to torture, starvation, and intense physical labor. Locked deep underground and forced to work without the aid of mechanized equipment or the protection of basic safety gear, the prisoners came to refer to these camps as Jáchymov Hell, while the prisoners there enslaved were referred to as MUKLs, the acronym of a Czech phrase meaning Man Designated for Liquidation („Muž Určený K Likvidaci“).
In addition to working in the mines, the MUKLs at Jáchymov’s Důl Rovnost (meaning “The Equality Mine” in Czech) were also tasked with the construction of their barracks and of a “chain changing room” (the “Řetízkárna”), where prisoners would change into and out of their mining clothes as they were moved from the barracks to the mines in the morning and then back at night.
The ruins of that building, the Řetízkárna, are some of the last remaining material witnesses to these crimes against humanity.
1960S
By the 1960s, larger and less depleted deposits of uranium ore had been discovered in East Germany, Siberia, and Qazaqstan. The changing political situation in Africa also meant that uranium from that continent was suddenly available to the Soviets. These changes gradually made the Jáchymov mines less strategically relevant for the Soviet Union and the countries of the Eastern Bloc; in 1961, the last mine in the complex, the Rovnost mine, was closed.
After the mines closed, the thousands of prisoners who worked at the site were relocated to other prisons and labor camps, where they continued to serve their sentences as slave laborers for the benefit of the USSR and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
TODAY
In the years that followed the closing of the Jáchymov mines, much of the material evidence recording the historical traumas of these prison camps has been destroyed. Stone, bricks, wood, and metal parts from the mines and barracks were disassembled and used in the construction and expansion of other penal colonies. Other objects, like electrical wiring or even things like mine carts, were scavenged by locals to be used as materials in the construction of their own homes. Nature, too, has reclaimed much of what little remains at the site.
Disproportionate rates of cancers and other diseases associated with the mining of uranium ore have tragically shortened the lives of those who were imprisoned at Jáchymov. As of 2025, only a few of the 70,000 prisoners who worked in the mines are able to share their stories.
This means that Řetízkárna is one of the only remaining witnesses to these chapters in Ore Mountains’ history. We want to breathe new life into the Řetízkárna and, by rebuilding the site as a community center and museum, ensure that the stories associated with this building are never forgotten.
1949-1961
Years during which ores from Jáchymov were mined for the Soviet Union. The last mine in the area officially closed on July 1, 1961.
18
The number of penal camps that were established at mine shafts in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. 14 of these were in or around Jáchymov.
70,000
The number of prisoners who passed through the labor camps at Jáchymov. In the 1950s, half of all prisoners in Czechoslovakia worked in Jáchymov’s mines.
70%
The approximate percentage of prisoners enslaved at Jáchymov who can be considered to be political prisoners. Political activities that resulted in imprisonment ranged from speaking in support of multi-party Liberal Democracy, criticizing the Communist regime, having served in any of the pre-Communist governments, joining banned organizations such as the Boy Scouts, serving as a member of the clergy, disseminating banned reading materials, and overt partisan activity like the smuggling of dissidents out of the country.
Another 7% or 8% of those imprisoned at Jáchymov during the Communist period were POWs—mostly Germans—captured by the Red Army near the end of the war and forced to work in the mines, even after 1945 and in violation of international law.
September 11, 1945
The date when Soviet soldiers and scientists first arrived in Jáchymov. Upon confirming that reports that the site was the only major source of uranium ore in Europe, the control of the region became a strategic priority of the USSR.
In March 1949, the Czechoslovaks were forced to surrender control of their uranium deposits to the USSR as a „gift of socialist brotherhood.“
Act No. 231/1948
After the communist coup d’état, this law made it a crime to “subvert the […] social or economic system, or national character” of the ČSSR, or to “hinder the implementation or fulfillment of a unified economic plan.” A plurality of the prisoners at Jáchymov, about 40%, were sentenced under No.231 or one of its later iterations.
1,102 Kilometers
Removing 3 to 5 meters of material a day, the prisoners and civilian employees dug over a thousand kilometers of tunnels under Jáchymov and the surrounding towns. Prisoners who did not exceed their work quotas would be fed less or not at all.
8k ToNs
During the period of communist period, 7,940 tons of high grade uranium ore were mined at Jáchymov and sent to the USSR. This ore became the raw material for the Soviet nuclear weapons programs—weapons that were used to intimidate the states of Central Europe and the world.
The Czech Republic has never been compensated for this material or the labor and suffering it represents. …
Stories from řetízkárna
Members of the Političtí vězni.cz („Political Prisoners“) association are working to capture and preserve the memories of former political prisoners—eyewitnesses to and actors in the history of Jáchymov. By recording interviews and studying artifacts from the site, Political Prisoners collects and preserves the stories of the Jáchymov mines using the methods of material and oral history with the hope that future generations of Europeans might come to terms with the trauma inflicted upon the region during the 20th century.
The collection of stories is currently being expanded to include others related to the Řetízkárna at Rovnost.