I grew up among test tubes
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Eva Astlová was born in Prague on 25 July 1958 to Eva, née Velíšková, and Vlastimil Astl. Her mother was a nurse, her father a doctor. She grew up together with her younger brother Jaromír (*1964), who also became a doctor. Her father’s older brother Jaromír Astl was a partisan in the Jičín region during World War II. After the February 1948 coup, he fled abroad and went to the USA. There he obtained American citizenship and participated in Project Orion, the development of pulsed nuclear propulsion for spacecraft. The family suffered because of his uncle’s emigration, found it difficult to find employment and worried about whether the children would be able to study. Eva Astlová therefore had to join Pioneer and later the Socialist Youth Union (SSM). After finishing primary school, she was admitted to grammar school in Libeň, Prague. She and her classmates were obliged to participate in temporary jobs agriculture and work experience. She also experienced the atmosphere of normalization during her medical studies in Prague. While working as a doctor at the Pod Petřínem Hospital, she witnessed the mass flight of East Germans to the West through the embassy in Prague. She and her colleagues treated the wounded after the brutal suppression of the demonstration on Národní Street in November 1989. It was only after the first free elections that she believed she would live out the next years of her life in a democratic system. In 2024 she lived in Prague and practiced medicine in Horní Počernice, in a house her grandmother had bought.
