We’ve always been kind of a weird family
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Pavla Paloušová, née Němcová, was born on 4 October 1958 in Podolí, Prague, the third child of Dana and Jiří Němcová. She grew up in a large family of nine. She lived through the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in the village of Studená in southern Bohemia. Shortly after 21 August 1968, the family left for Austria. In November of that year, however, they decided to return. In the following years, her family’s apartment in Ječná Street became a centre of dissent and the underground. In 1974, she entered grammar school and was the last of her siblings to be allowed by the regime to graduate from secondary school. After graduating in 1978, she signed Charter 77, to which her parents were also signatories. She was not allowed to continue her studies, although she very much wanted to. In the following years, she worked mostly as a cleaner and had problems keeping a job. In 1981 she married Martin Palouš. She underwent many interrogations, during which she refused to answer. In 1987 and 1989 the couple adopted a boy and a girl. After the Velvet Revolution, the family stayed in the USA several times. In 2024, Pavla Paloušová was living in Prague.
