Eva Jourová

* 1938

  • Father 's arrest in November 1949 "He was arrested at five o'clock in the morning." - "Do you remember that?" - "On the 8th of November. I remember that. It was Tuesday, I even remember the day. Perhaps ten people burst in, an awful lot. On each floor there were standing - as the tenants told us later - two guys with some weapons. Grandma, who lived downstairs with grandpa, was locked up and told not to go out. Dad was pulled out of the bed in the morning. When he got dressed, about four of them led him away. Grandma and grandpa said they could still see him through the window, while he was being led into the car. Lots of people was walking around him and leading him into the car. And about eight people stayed at us, the apartment [was] full. They turned it upside down. They were there until the afternoon. Then they picked up Mum to go with them. They took her to the cottage and turned even the cottage upside down. There they found the pistol Dad had, a firearm certificate next to it, he held it legally, he asked for it after the war. We have [the cottage] bellow the hills, bellow the forests, bellow Brdy. At the time, he wanted to get it [the pistol, trans.] on a permit. Then they also used it as evidence against him, that it was meant to serve a purpose. It was also exhibited there. "

  • Dr. Horáková was arrested in September or so, I remember it, my dad and me, we were away at the cottage. Mum came, brought him money and some things, and begged him, for God's sake, to take his brother and leave. Dad was saying at the time that he had no reason to leave because firstly, he hadn´t been doing anything, and secondly, that he wasn´t a rat and wouldn´t leave the ship when it was sinking. He still had a chance, he didn't leave. Then we knew that the net was tightening, because there were guys standing in the street, there were cars. About fourteen days before my father's arrest, my uncle came and persuaded him to go away with him, that he had a car somewhere that no one knew about. So that he could still leave then. Dad already knew they were after him. He was waiting for the arrest, people around him were being arrested. It was already known. "-" And he refused again? "-" Yes. "

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Close-knit family helped my father survive the prison

Eva Jourová was born on April 17, 1938 in Prague as the daughter of the national socialist politician Josef Nestával. Her father was first imprisoned by the Nazis in 1940 for cooperating with the resistance organization Defence of the Nation and released at the end of the war. After the war, he worked as a director of the Health Insurance Companies Central Union and he again got involved in the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party. In November 1949, he was arrested and tried in a trial with Milada Horáková‘s group. He was sentenced to life imprisonment while Eva was finishing primary school. Being the daughter of a political prisoner, she was not allowed to study and began working as a dental assistant, later a scrub nurse at a dental clinic. She finished her studies by distance learning at a grammar school and a secondary medical school. Her father Josef Nestával was not released until November 1963, and two years later Eva got married. She has one son. She still lives in the apartment on Valentinská Street, where she grew up as a child. She is a member of the Club of Milada Horáková.