"We knew each other, teachers of this field from the East Bohemia Region. So I also knew Milica Skvorcová. She was an excellent teacher, much better than me. She was fired. We were almost friends, and I took her place, which was very embarrassing and sad. I was friends with Milica. But she was a black sheep, like her colleagues, unwanted. I wasn't allowed to meet her. Twice I was summoned to the headmaster. He himself was probably summed to the party organization. I was invited to the headmaster´s office and there he reprimanded me for not being allowed to do this. There are always helpful people who will supply information... I was seen by students, but they wouldn't say anything bad. They liked Milica, and by seeing me socializing with her, they were quite friendly with me."
"That was maybe [in] 1965, it was getting loose. The Party was admitting mistakes, and besides, as we had separated from the primary school and we were a general education secondary school, the original party organization was from the entire 12-year-school. Our headmaster, Jaromír Horáček, wanted to be independent of the old, conservative organization. He wanted to create his own, and he persuaded the teachers and students from the graduating classes and me to join the Communist Party. Because I was afraid of losing my job - and I liked it at that school - I was persuaded. It was a betrayal. It turned out that I had to be in the Frýdštejn organization where I lived. That was bad. There were very convinced communists here from the time of the First Republic. First of all, they were surprised that I, the daughter of a tradesman, would be in the party. Two witnesses had to vouch for me. One of them was comrade director Vavřich and the other witness was professor Miller."
"We had to leave the church. It was in 1958. My sister died in January. About a month after that. I said that when she died, there was no one to speak at her funeral, that perhaps only the parish priest would have been considered, but the funeral was in Prague. My colleagues burst into tears when I talked about my sister. And the director admonished me: 'Comrade Matoušová, you can't introduce such talk here!' In short, I left the church."
Ludmila was born into the family of Marie and František Matouš, a worker and tradesman from Frýdštejn, on 13 April 1934. Two years later her sister Marie was born. In the 1950s her father had to close the business. After graduating from the grammar school in Turnov, where she began to attend right after the war, Ludmila entered the Faculty of Science in Brno, majoring in biology, teaching. After graduation in 1957 she taught at the primary school in Kvasice near Kroměříž. A year later, she had to leave the church, like all teachers, by order of the Ministry of Education and Sports. In the same year, her sister Marie died tragically. Ludmila Matoušová returned to Frýdštejn so that her parents would not have tenants move into the house. She got a job in Rovensko pod Troskami. The following year she worked at the Turnov Grammar School. In 1965 she was persuaded, among others, by the headmaster Jaromír Horáček, a reformist communist, to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) so that they could enforce more realxed teaching. Two years after the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, the headmaster and his close associates were expelled from the grammar school. During the holidays of that same year, 1970, the witness failed a harsh political check and was expelled from the Communist Party. She then had difficulty finding a job. She taught in Žamberk for a year. In 1971, thanks to the headmistress Růžena Pavlová, she began teaching at the grammar school in Semily. In 1977 she married Josef Věříš. She stayed in Semily until her retirement in 1991. In the 1990s she participated in the restoration of the Sokol in Frýdštejn, where she was living at the time of recording (2024).
Ludmila Věříšová, née Matoušová, in a class photo of the Secondary General Education School in Turnov in 1965, standing in the third row, first from the left
Ludmila Věříšová, née Matoušová, in a class photo of the Secondary General Education School in Turnov in 1965, standing in the third row, first from the left
