Helena Prokůpková

* 1930

  • “My parents had a farm, we had some twenty-five hectares, twelve cows, two horses. Four horses initially, then just two. My brothers and I had to help from when we were children - we were still attending school but we already had to do various odd jobs, every hand was needed here. I milked cows when I was eighteen.”

  • “Well, and then it started. They went at Dad as if he was a kulak. They wanted to form a cooperative, but no one was willing to sign, no one wanted to join. So the police came for our dad and the neighbour, they took them, drove off, and the then the others signed. The neighbour was called Mr Brejcha.”

  • “I wasn’t all that affected by the end of the war, I was fifteen. The main thing we wanted was peace, so the boys wouldn’t have to serve in the army, the young ones. Our boys hadn’t done service yet. They did later - my brother was with the AEC, the older one that is, not the younger one. My husband also served with the AEC, he was in the mines. My brother worked in construction. My husband was hit by a cave-in, the coal got in under his skin. He said that was the worst, when the wounds scabbed, and then they stripped them off - the pain was terrible.”

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You shouldn’t tell on people or envy them. It’s none of your business how other people live

Helena Prokůpková was born on 27 March 1930 into a farming family in Holyně near Prague. As a child, she had to help tend to the farm, like her two brothers. World War II did not impact the family in any significant way, whereas the Communist coup of 1948 brought a lot of suffering. Threatened as a designated kulak, her father was forced to sign off all their property to the local cooperative. The witness‘s older brother completed his mandatory military service doing forced labour in the Auxiliary Engineering Corps (AEC).