Helena Zikmundová

* 1945

  • "The soldiers had no idea where they were at the time. Not at all. We asked them, because we all knew Russian, and we asked the Russian soldiers in particular: 'Well, it's peaceful here, nothing's happening, why are you here?' 'We have our orders and have to obey, so that's why. There's supposed to be a revolution, and we're going to suppress it.' We were at a loss - what revolution, there's nothing going on here. We knew about the Prague Spring, but not much."

  • "As I was still young and a bit stupid at the time, I went to the Radio [building]. That's where the news came from. I can tell you there were already barricades there, there was shooting. And that's actually where I saw the massacre for the first time. There were wounded people rolling on the ground, and even a 16-year-old boy - dead. That was the first dead person I actually saw, with my own eyes. You can't even tell such a story. In short, I ran away while I could, I cried, and it wasn't just me - so many people cried."

  • "A fifteen- or sixteen-year old boy in Karlín went to put a sign on a statue, as in, go home, we don't want you here. And a mom with a stroller drove by and took the kid out and went to help the boy, thinking that nothing would happen to them. Well, all three of them got shot. All three of them died that day."

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    Zruč nad Sázavou, 19.11.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 41:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Never join the party, even if I were to die

Helena in 1962
Helena in 1962
zdroj: Witness's archive

Helena Zikmundová was born on 10 October 1945 in Krásné Údolí in the Tachov region, but lived all her life in Prague. At her father‘s request, she trained as a cook and worked at the plant canteen at the Troja Dairy in Holešovice for many years, later running the canteen. She remembers especially the occupation in August 1968, which shocked her deeply. When she saw the dead and wounded near the Czechoslovak Radio building and elsewhere in Prague, she and her husband decided to help. They brought milk from the dairy where they were both employed and bread from a nearby bakery to those in need to make up for the dwindling supply. They also experienced several unpleasant checks by the occupation soldiers. During the ‚normalisation‘ years, they had to deal with housing problems. At the time of the interview, she lived in Zruč nad Sázavou.