We were sheltering refugees heading to the West
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Eva Matoušková, née Konečná, was born on October 28, 1929 in Přerov. However, her family soon moved to Brno, where she spent her whole life. Her father worked as a civil engineer employed at the Brno City Hall, her mother took care of the household, and besides their daughter Eva, they had a son. During the First Republic and during the war she got to know both German and Jewish Brno. Because they lived in the Jewish part of the city, some Jews hid valuables with her parents before going to the transports. After the war, Eva graduated from high school in 1948 and began studying law. Her father was involved in the National Socialist Party, so immediately after the February coup he lost his job, was imprisoned for a while, and finally put to manual labor. After her father’s arrest, Eva was expelled from her studies. She earned a living as a health care worker. Influenced by her father’s fate and the impossibility of studying, she joined through friends the illegal group SKŘEL (Student Christian Legion), which found temporary accommodation and shelters for refugees heading to the West. However, state security monitored the group’s activities. Eva Matoušková was arrested on May 5, 1949 at 5 a.m. in her parents’ apartment, where she was taken to the police station in her pyjamas. She then ended up in pre-trial detention in Cejl Prison. The interrogations took place without torture. The closed trial of the whole group took place on November 17, 1949 in Brno. Forty young people stood before the tribunal, death sentences and sentences of many years were passed. Matoušková was sentenced to six years imprisonment for treason. In addition, the regime took revenge on her brother, a doctor, who did not get a job as an assistant because of his convicted sister. Eva Matoušková served half of her sentence in Stíčany, where she worked in a brickyard. She was then released on parole with the condition that she must be employed in industry for the next five years. She therefore worked for a certain period of time at Tesla Pardubice, after which she returned to Brno. The stigma of a political prisoner haunted her for a long time in her career and in her civilian life. She was unable to continue her studies at university, she worked only menial jobs, and she lost friends. It was only in the 1960s that she found a more respectable job as a secretary in a research institute thanks to her future husband, where she remained until her retirement. In 2014, Eva Matoušková received a certificate as a participant of the anti-communist resistance.
