There was much that was merry, more that was sad
Helena Stránská, née Ptáčková, was born in 1924 in the village of Černovice in southern Bohemia. Like her sister Růžena Carpeza Ptáčková (also recorded in Memory of Nations), she was assigned to forced labour in Graz. After a devastating air raid in July 1944, she was transferred to a labour camp on the borders of Serbia. She fell ill and was sent to Prague in August 1944, from where she went home. However, she was reported and had to sign up for work again in Prague; she commuted there until Christmas 1944. Before the end of the war, she risked her life by supporting partisans in the vicinity of Kamenice. After the war she and her husband opened a shop in the Kladno District. It was confiscated during the wave of nationalisation, and Helena Stránská was marked as unreliable and was unable to find any employment. She and her husband raised two children.