„Jew Siegle, we‘ll hang you on a lantern!“ Friendship with the Jews brought denunciations and anonymous threats
Stáhnout obrázek
Marta Plášilová, née Sieglová, was born on 12 December 1930 into a family of five. She was the middle of three children. She grew up in Libeň, Prague, and her father Karel Siegl worked as a technical director in the Vetka electrical company. As a child she attended the funeral of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. She became friends with many Jewish families, most of whom perished during the Holocaust. Her father was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo on suspicion of aiding Jews. She experienced the bombing of Prague. She and her younger brother spent the end of the war with their grandparents in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, near the village of Leskovice, where on May 6, 1945, the Nazis murdered twenty-five inhabitants of the village. In 1950 she married František Plášil, with whom she spent most of her life in Olomouc. They had two children together. Immediately after the war, her husband František joined the National Security Corps and thus the Communist Party. He worked all his life as a military official, between 1967 and 1979 he worked as a deputy military prosecutor in Olomouc. Marta Plášilová came from a family of Czech Brethren Protestants. She kept her faith, but hid it throughout her husband‘s military service. In 2024, Marta Plášilová lived with her daughter in Olomouc.
