I put up resistence, but within the limits of the law
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Věra Heidlerová, née Janíková, was born on December 15, 1936 in Uherské Hradiště. She grew up as the only child of parents Otto Janík and Anna, née Svobodová. When little Věra was four years old, her father was arrested by the Gestapo. As a Sokol member, a reserve officer of the Czechoslovak army and above all a member of the resistance group Defense of the Nation he spent nine months in custody in Uherské Hradiště and Kounice dormitories in Brno. He was briefly detained also in 1944. Her father’s brother Antonín was also imprisoned for the resistance (in the Small Fortress of Terezín). After the liberation of Uherské Hradiště her father became a member of the revolutionary MNV (Local Committee) and as a political prisoner after the war held the post of director of the financial office. In 1951, as part of the so-called action 77, her father was transferred to production and became a worker in a brick factory, later a warehouseman at Agrotechna in Uherské Hradiště. Věra graduated from secondary grammar school and started working. In the years 1954–1959 she danced with the Hradišťan folklore group. In 1957, she took part in a tour to Austria, Switzerland, Italy and France. After graduating from high school, she got a job at the library in Uherské Hradiště and completed a two-year study of librarianship in Brno by distance learning. In the end, she managed the library, and in the years 1963–1968 she studied remotely at the faculty of the social sciences at the Charles university, majoring in librarianship. In 1969, however, she lost her job and, after difficulties in finding a job, she ended up working as a worker in the warehouse of the company Drobné zboží. The name of the witness from the first marriage (Volopichová) is entered in State Security registration protocol in the “PO category”, a person under screening. Shortly after visiting her family in Vienna in 1979, she underwent an interrogation by State Security. In the years 1984–1993, she lived and worked in Litvínov, where she also experienced the Velvet Revolution. She is a member of the Memory Association, which strives to preserve the prison in Uherské Hradiště and transform it into a museum of totalitarianism. Since 1993, the witness has lived in Veselí nad Moravou.
