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.
