"In 1968, in August 1968. It was such a moment, I say, it was really a moment in my life when I came out of our "Basta" with the boys and we went to one end, there stood a Russian soldier with a machinegun and started aiming at us. So I turned around and we hurried to the other side to go there. There stood another and aimed a machine gun at us again. And at that moment I said to myself, 'I don't want to live here anymore. My children will not grow up here. 'I was divorced since 1966, my husband and I divorced, and I already had children in exclusive care and I said,' Enough! We can't live here. '
"The forty-eighth ... it was such a coup again. Suddenly it was something else. Between forty-eight and forty-five, we lived as young people, we went to dances, we went dancing, we were scouts. We just lived as young free people. Then suddenly it started to tighten and one had to start paying attention to who he was talking to, how he was talking, and that was the worst. Perhaps the worst part was that you didn't know who you could say something to and who you couldn't. Who you have to be careful of. "
"When the year 1989 came, I said to myself "Now, it is the Velvet Revolution, the people are free" And I immediately decided to go there, alone, I said to myself. "I have to enjoy this myself, the return." So I went, I took my car and went there immediately in the year 1990. And suddenly I arrived and it wasn't very pleasant at those borders yet. They didn't really welcome us. I was hoping they'd tell us, "Welcome home again." No, no. It wasn't like that yet ... I had nowhere to live. I came here and no one lived in our house. I had nowhere to be. So I went to my mother's cousin, Mrs. Horáčková, who was Michal Horáček's mother. She accommodated me in Prague. And I was walking around Prague and I said to myself, "So I'm home again, I'm home again." It was a bit sad because everything was closed. Not a single restaurant, I couldn't even have drink. Everything closed. I went to Petřín to the lookout tower and now it was all closed down and there was a guy and I said: "Yeah, it's closed here." And he replied : "Lady, you must have been away for long. It's been closed for thirty years. "
"The forty-eighth ... it was such a coup again. Suddenly it was something else. Between forty-eight and forty-five, we lived as young people, we went to dances, we went dancing, we were scouts. We just lived as young free people. Then suddenly it started to tighten and one had to start paying attention to who he was talking to, how he was talking, and that was the worst. Perhaps the worst part was that you didn't know who you could say something to and who you couldn't. Who you have to be careful of. "
"And suddenly in 1989 the Velvet Revolution came and suddenly the gates opened back home. So, of course, I got in the car at the first opportunity and drove off. And I wanted to try it for myself. And I can tell you that I drove through the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. And when I arrived in Prague, balloons suddenly flew over the Vltava. So I thought, 'This is such a beautiful welcome back to Prague.' So I found everything again, as I left, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful return home. I felt at home here again. "
"And I went out with the children, and there stood a Soviet soldier in the corner, aiming a machine gun at us. So I was really scared and went to the other side. And there stood another soldier, and he aimed his machine gun at us again. And at that moment, I thought, 'I don't want to live here anymore. I don't want my children to live under the danger of machine guns, so I suddenly decided to leave. To France. At the end of my studies, I had the opportunity to be at the Science Institute in Strasbourg for three months, so I discovered a world where there were no soldiers, where there was freedom, and where I could say what I wanted, speak as I wanted. So the pattern was already in me. "
photo: Fotografie byla pořízena při natáčení v roce 2022
photo: Fotografie byla pořízena při natáčení v roce 2022
Download image
Helena Kopecká, née Marková, was born on February 10, 1931 in Prague. Her mother Milena Marková, later remarried as Parker, worked in 1939 as a Times journalist at the British Embassy in Prague. Soon after the onset of Nazism, she started to be followed by Gestapo and had to flee from Czechoslovakia to England, where she married for the second time and where she also died after a difficult birth in 1943. Helena’s father was František Miloslav Marek, one of the first Svojsík scouts who, after studying in the United States, brought basketball to Europe at the end of the 1920s. During World War II, he was arrested for resistance activities and sentenced to death. However, the execution did not take place and F. M. Marek returned home in May 1945. Helena Kopecká graduated from the French Grammar School in Prague in 1945–1950. She wanted to continue studying medicine, but this was not possible due to her “inappropriate bourgeois origins.” In the end, she managed to study molecular biology externally. After the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, she together with her two sons, Michael and Daniel, decided to live in exile. Thanks to previous contacts with the nobelist Giorgi Bernardi, she managed to catch up in a scientific laboratory in Strasbourg and gradually build a career in France. During her exile life, she also worked for two years at Stanford University in the USA. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Helena Kopecká organized a microbiology course in Czechoslovakia, devoted herself to its application in medicine and lectured in many world capitals. After retiring, she worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) for another ten years. Helena Kopecká lived in Prague in 2022, from where she regularly travels to France. As a single mother, she raised both sons in exile. Mrs. Helena Kopecká passed away on July, the 20th, 2022.
