Once it was N, get her out of here.
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Věra Peštuková was born on 20 April 1939 in Považská Bystrica in the then independent Slovak state. Her parents had different national origins. Her father Jaroslav Pavlík was Czech, her mother Edeltraud, née Rzeszotková, had Polish roots but grew up in a German environment. After her parents divorced, her mother and Vera moved to Opava. In 1945, after the Germans declared Opava a fortress town, they went to live with relatives in Falknov nad Ohří (today’s Sokolov), where they experienced the end of the war and the arrival of the American army. On their return to bombed-out Opava, they found their house looted. The mother was then identified by the authorities as German and the family was threatened with being included in the German expulsion. Thanks to a bribe, they were eventually allowed to stay. In the 1950s, Věra graduated from medical school and then worked as a nurse at the URL, first at the hospital in Krnov and then in Ostrava at Fifejdy. In 1962 she married Miroslav Peštuka, with whom she had daughters Barbora and Veronika between 1962 and 1965. Her husband was expelled from the Communist Party for his opposition to the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops during the normalisation inspections. He was prevented from advancing in his job and was not allowed to hold managerial positions, even though he had the appropriate training. In 1969, the family moved to Jeseník, where Věra Peštuková worked as a nurse in the local spa. After the fall of communism, she took advantage of the opening of the borders and in 1995 worked as a caregiver in Germany for half a year. After returning in 2011, she worked as a guide for German tourists at the Priessnitz Spa in Jeseník. At the time of filming in 2023 she was still living in Jeseník.
