I don’t want to see anyone dead, not even an SS. I’ve seen too many corpses.
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Luisa or Líza Matoušková was born on November 25, 1930 in Nové Hrady into a mixed Czech-Jewish family. Her mother was a Christian, her father belonged to the extensive Jewish business family of the Cíglers. Before the war, the witness was used to speaking Czech and German, having Czech and German friends. But that changed with the war, the family faced anti-Jewish measures, and the witness’s father also died at that time. At the beginning of 1945, she had to board a transport to Terezín. She went home alone in May 1945. Her sister Berta returned a month later because she fell ill with scarlet fever. Of the extended family, only the witness with her sister Berta returned. Before the state returned the property to the family after the war despite all the bureaucracy, the communists were already in power and the property was confiscated again. The witness started working at the age of 16 in a textile factory, but later she was a housewife and helped her husband, a painter. In 1950, she was interrogated by State Security in connection with Jan Mašek, a well-known people smuggler from Šumava. Luisa Matoušková had many hobbies in life - competitive fishing, riding motorcycles and cars, shooting with a small rifle, yachting, acting. After the revolution, the family got their property back and Luisa fulfilled her dream, setting up a ceramics shop.
