„Když jste se vrátila k tetě po válce, vyprávěla jste jí něco o tom, co jste zažila? – Ne. – A někomu jinému? – Ne. – Ani manželovi? – Manželovi jo. To jsme si vzájemně řekli, ale tetě jsme to neříkali. – Manžel to měl za války podobně jako vy? – Ano.“
„Vy jste se s manželem seznámili už před válkou? – My jsme se seznámili v Terezíně. – Vy jste se vdávala v Terezíně? – Poprvé ano. – Jaká ta svatba byla? – Dojemná, velmi. – Mohla byste ji popsat? – Nerada. – To byla první svatba. A druhá? – Druhá byla v Praze. – Když jste se sešli s manželem. – Protože ta první byla neplatná. Tak byla druhá. – Ta druhá byla veselejší? – Ta byla veselejší, rozhodně.“
„Vy jste potom museli do Terezína. – Ano. – Věděli jste, co Terezín je? – Vlastně ne. Nevěděli. – Vybavujete si, jak probíhalo, když jste dostali příkaz tam jet? Balili jste? – Balili jsme. Dohadovali jsme se s maminkou, co je důležité na oblečení a co není. Hlavně šlo o oblečení, co je důležité a co ne.“
„Říkala jste, že jste měli obavy z toho, co se děje v Německu. Nepřemýšleli rodiče o tom, že se vystěhují z Československa? – Mluvilo se o tom hodně, samozřejmě. My jsme dokonce byli předtím, zrovna, ve Švýcarech. Byli jsme ve stejném hotelu, čirou náhodou, kde byli… už nevím, kdo. Ti řekli: ´To jste byli moudří, to jste udělali dobře.´ Ale maminka řekla: ´Jak dobře?´ ´Že jste sem jeli a že tu zůstanete.´ Maminka řekla: ´Ani náhodou tady nezůstaneme.´ - Takže jste se vrátili. – My jsme se vrátili, všichni byli strašně udivení, že jsme se vrátili, ale my jsme se vážně vrátili v září 1938.“
“I was in Zagreb with a friend of mine. I wouldn’t have gone there by myself, but she was supposed to go back. England was arranged only for me. One day, my relative, she was a cousin of my father’s, told me: ´There was a phone call from the English consulate, some gentleman will come for you within a week and you will go to England with him.´ It was a shock for me, and I really did say: ´That’s strange, my parents wrote to me just now that everything is back to normal again…´ – that was in October – ´and told me to come back home.´ I lied.”
“We spent the obligatory three nights in the Trade Fair Palace, and we experienced the first horrors there. We departed in the morning on January 30, in rows of five. Our group was still leaving on a regular passenger train. We rode to Bohušovice, because it was the closest railway station to Terezín. There we were told to get off the train. It was in winter, snow, there were SS men and policemen. Older people were taken onto a cargo wagon, and we pulled them to Terezín.”
“In February we experienced the air raids on Dresden. Freiberg is about thirty-five kilometres from Dresden. There were alarms, sometimes an air raid alarm would sound, but that did not mean anything, but now the sirens were sounding incessantly. The foremen and SS women were running around like crazy. They led us into one large hall in the factory, locked us inside and they themselves went to shelters. And they were shouting at us that we were not supposed to approach the windows: ´Don’t go to the windows. No, no.´ Of course we went there and we saw the groups of bomber planes. ´Christ, they are American or English. If only they could liberate us.´ They bombed Dresden completely, but I can tell you, we didn’t care a bit.”
“We were meeting together, and all of a sudden I was among the Jewish youth, which was actually something I had not been originally accustomed to, but the fate has just brought us together this way. There was nothing else left for us, anyway. We were going to Hagibor, where was the only sports stadium which was allowed for the Jews. We were not allowed into any park or garden. And so I began going there, too, because they were playing volleyball there, sitting and talking, and doing exercises. At least I had something.”
“As soon as the train stopped, they entered the trains – we rode a regular train. They spoke Polish and they said: ´All the luggage will remain in the train. Get off the train.´ They said it quite loudly and then they began whispering to us: ´You are healthy, you can work, but you cannot save the children anyway.´ We were asking them: ´Where are we?´ They said: ´In Auschwitz.´ While we were still on the train, we saw huge chimneys, and we thought: ´Those are the factories where we will work.´”
Lisa Miková, née Lichtensternová, was born January 31, 1922 in Prague in a Jewish family. With anti-Semitism on the rise, the family was considering emigration to Switzerland in August 1938, but they eventually decided to return to Prague. In autumn 1938, the parents sent their daughter Lisa to relatives living in Zagreb, Croatia, from where she was to travel to England, but she returned o Czechoslovakia again. After her expulsion from grammar school she attended English Grammar School in Prague and she passed the state examination in the English language. Later she studied at Rotter‘s school of graphic design for marketing and fashion design in Prague, but she was expelled from the school due to her Jewish origin. On January 27, 1942 she and her parents boarded the transport to the Terezín ghetto. She lived in the Hamburg barracks and she worked as a draftswoman in the Magdeburg barracks where she met her future husband, Ing. František Mautner. They married in Terezín in 1943 and she became involved in the illegal movement in Terezín through her husband: she was drawing plans of Terezín for the Czechoslovak resistance movement. Lisa‘s parents were deported to Auschwitz in September 1943. Her husband František went to Auschwitz on September 28, 1944 and Lisa followed him in early October 1944. In November 1944 she was deported from Auschwitz to the camp in Freiberg near Dresden (subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp), where she worked in an aircraft factory. On April 13, 1945 she was transported to the concentration camp Mauthausen, where she lived to see the liberation on May 5, 1945. Her parents had died in Auschwitz; her husband František returned after having been interned in several concentration camps. After the war, Lisa worked in a bookshop, in a culture centre in the German Democratic Republic and later in a company which imported books from abroad. She graduated from the Higher School for Booksellers in Leipzig. She and her husband changed their names from Mautner to Mika. Mrs. Lisa Miková passed away on June, the 21st, 2022.
