"I remember that, that touched them in medical school, that was the most horrible experience of my life. I still had a fight about Palach years later because when I was working [as a doctor] at the railways, I had a nurse with me who was excellent as a nurse. She never told anyone to leave, but she was a die-hard communist. And sometimes we argued... One time on the floor where the rehab was, the rehab nurses came to me. They told us not to shout so much that you could hear it in the hallway when we argued about politics. And we had patients from the electrification unitof the railways who were working in Germany and Hungary. And because it was more profitable for that electrification unit to pay for us to travel and stay for two or three days in East Germany with the patients and do preventive check-ups. So we went there to see them. And we were going there and it was just about August. And we were driven there in a car by an electrification unit driver. And Majka started saying that Palach was crazy. I got so angry at that moment that I said, 'Say what you want, but you're not going to say that to me here.' And now I just saw in the mirror that the driver was looking back at us."
"And then I moved to Prague 6, where I worked in the district. And there I learned that my patients, who were in some local Communist Party organization, said that they should ask me to join the party. And the director of the OUNZ (District Institute of National Health) summoned me, and I was already at that time thinking about getting baptized. So my views changed completely. But I had to go there and a colleague said to me, 'Please, you're going to say everything right away. You have to be careful what you say. Say, 'I've got kids and a sick husband and stuff like that.' I got there and I started. But I was so embarrassed, and I said, 'You know, Mr. Director, I've been deciding to get baptized for a while now, and I can't get it together.' And he sat there and he said, 'Well, think about it and come back in a fortnight.' And I was like: Again in a fortnight. So I said, 'I'm telling you, I've been deciding for a year that I'm going to be baptized, so I don't want to join the party.' Basically, I didn't want to join any party, because I don't like to have to conform to somebody's views."
Nina Havlíková was born in Česká Lípa on July 8, 1949 and spent the first ten years of her life there. Her father, Václav Zelenka, came from Jindřichův Hradec, was totally deployed during the war, then completed his economic education. Her mother, Nina Zelenková, née Navrátilová, came from Česká Lípa and they all lived with her parents, whose farm and transport company were expropriated in 1948. Her father, mother and grandfather joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) right after the war and there were frequent disputes in the family on this subject. Nina Havlíková always stood on the other side of the barricade. After graduating from medical school, she never accepted an offer to join the communist party, although most doctors routinely did so for career reasons. Thus, she worked most of her professional life as a general practitioner or company doctor. After the Velvet Revolution, she left her job and she and her husband adopted a baby girl in addition to their three children and eventually fostered a baby boy. Both children had a number of disabilities and their care was challenging. Even today, when they are adults, Nina Havlíková supports them. At the time of recording, in 2025, she was living in Prague.
