My father used to say: “the Democrats are aiming for their goal slowly, the communists will get there by express train.” Then they imprisoned him
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Věra Fořtová, née Hrabalová was born on 19 June 1942 in Prague. Her father Otto Hrabal worked as a bodywork engineer in the Praga car factory, her mother Věra studied actuarial mathematics and when their children were born, she became a stay-at-home spouse. Otto Hrabal participated in hiding his Jewish friend Milan Reiman during the war. He then got him a job at the Ministry of Industry. Otto Hrabal was arrested and sentenced to serve eighteen years for alleged espionage in 1951. He was granted amnesty in 1960. The family with four children stayed without money, their mother worked in an ironing shop in Pragoděv. Thanks to the intervention of her aunts - teachers, she (Věra) could still graduate from an eleven-year secondary school and then from a two-year extension course, majoring in rehabilitation nursing. She spent her whole life working as a rehabilitation nurse, first in Mariánské Lázně, and later in Prague. She got married in 1965 and had two children. After 1989, she managed to have her father rehabilitated posthumously by the court.
