Helena Bobková

* 1948

  • "I was already living in Sokolov and heard on the radio that we were attacked and that the towns were full. I thought to myself that maybe it's not true, they're just reading something. I looked out the window and saw that there were cars and soldiers standing there. About three days later at 4:30 in the morning - I don't sleep much at night - I look out the window and there was a big military truck coming out from underneath and there were dead bodies piled on top of each other, a car full of them. They didn't even cover it. I didn't want to believe it. The occupiers didn't have anything to eat, they didn't care about them, once they shot the bakers' tires off the car and took their bread. The ones in the woods ate mushrooms, probably got poisoned. Or if they were scared and wanted to run away, they shot them. That's how they say the occupiers treated their own people, that's what I heard from people..."

  • "JZD (Unified agriculture cooperative) started in 1957. My dad was the best farmer, people didn't want to join, some didn't go and stayed to farm privately. My father didn't want to go either. And they said that when he signed, only then, they said, the others would go. There was a strike and then he signed under pressure. It ended up that they appointed him chairman. They started to convert the buildings into a pigsty so that the cattle could be put into one building, poultry houses were built, vegetables and fruit were planted. What was there was put together so that it could be given away. My father arranged all this." - "Did your father have any problems with the Communists because he was in the Western army during the war?" - "More like when he had already put the JZD in Valeč together, there were voices that he couldn't be chairman if he went to church. So he didn't do the chairman's job and then he became an agronomist."

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    Valeč, 06.03.2024

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His father fought in the Wehrmacht andwith the Allies, then brought the family to the borderlands

Helena Bobková in 1966
Helena Bobková in 1966
photo: Archive of the witness

Helena Bobková was born on 28 January 1948 in Valč. Her father’s family came from the vicinity of Zelów, Poland, where the Czech minority lived. Her father, Vilém Dedecius, had to enlist in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, and at the end of the war he defected to the Allies and reached Czechoslovakia with them. In the south of Bohemia he met his future wife and in 1946 they went to settle the border area in Valec. The witness’s father was forced to join the JZD (Unified agriculture cooperative) in 1957. As the best farmer, he was also the chairman at first, then only an agronomist, as he was a practicing believer. The witness worked in the agricultural cooperative, later as a tutor in the children’s home at the Valec castle. After the castle burned down, she got a job in civil defense and education. She was also involved in activities within the Red Cross and the volunteer fire brigade. In 2024, she lived in Valeč.