Dozens of people honor Leopold’s political prisoners – Home – News

The Roman Catholic Mass in the Parish Church of St. John Ignac in Leopoldov began the reverent commemoration of those who were unjustly and illegally imprisoned by the communist regime. The main celebrant was Tadeáš Róbert Spišák, abbot of the Želivsk Monastery, the Slovak Union of Political Prisoners (KPVS) learned.

photo: TASR, Lucas Greenay

In the picture, a memorial plaque at the prison execution station (left), where people lay wreaths in memory of those who were unjustly and illegally imprisoned by the communist regime in Leopoldov in 2007. Saturday, August 24, 2024, Hlohovets district.

Dozens of people then laid wreaths at the prison’s memorial plaque in memory of the political prisoners imprisoned there during the communist regime. The event also included a visit to the former prison cemetery, a memorial service at the monument to Pavel Gojdic, Metodo Terchka and other prisoners who died in Leopoldov prison, and a memorial service at the symbolic grave of an unknown political prisoner.

Photo: TASR, Lukáš Grinaj

SR Leopoldov KPVS Memorial to communist prisoners Politics TTX In the photo, participants listen near a memorial plaque at the Institute of Prison Executive, dedicated to those unjustly and illegally imprisoned by the communist regime, in Leopoldov, Hlohovets district, Saturday, August 24, 2024.

Every August, the KPVS, together with the Prison and Judicial Guards General Directorate, has held memorial events in Leopoldov since 1999. The August dates are associated with the revolt of prisoners against the harsh conditions in prisons, which was severely suppressed on August 28, 1955.

More than 450,000 political prisoners were held in prisons in what is now Slovakia and the Czech Republic between 1948 and 1989. After 1989, approximately 70,000 people were rehabilitated in Slovakia.

Leopoldovska Prison is the oldest prison in Slovakia. This former anti-Turkish fortress was the worst prison facility in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, along with a labor camp near a uranium mine, often referred to as an extermination facility.