I refused to join the Communist Party at work, so they got rid of me
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Eva Uhlířová, née Barejšková, was born on 12 September 1924 in Prague into the family of a varnisher Josef Barejška and his wife Klára. She had a brother Václav. The family lived in a house that her parents built in Řepy. She started school there in 1930. In 1937 she graduated from the school and entered the school of the Boromean Sisters in Malá Strana for two years. Then she was forced to work in the Ringhoffer factories in Smíchov, where she worked twelve hours a day in harsh conditions as a worker in the arms industry. She was released after three years in February 1945. In May 1945, she experienced an air raid in Řepy, during which a neighbouring house was destroyed. During the liberation in May 1945, she met the Vlasov army who liberated Řepy, after which they were shot by Soviet soldiers. After the war, she attended a language school and improved her shorthand. In 1949, she married Jan Uhlíř, who studied at the university, but after February 1948 he had to quit his studies and worked as an ordinary clerk in Avia. His father Josef had to liquidate his varnish business when the communists came to power. She had two children in the 1950s, then worked at Keramoprojekt, where she refused to join the Communist Party, which led to her dismissal. For the rest of her working life she was employed at Konstruktiva, where the pressure was not to such an extent. She retired in 1979, after which she worked at the Prague Cultural Centre. In the 1990s she was widowed and also buried her prematurely deceased daughter. She raised a son and a daughter and took care of her grandchildren. In 2023 she was living in Prague.
