"That's when I stopped worrying - about that kind of social life, which is not so important, but also about Israel. I went there and I didn't know anything about the country. And only here, what they were throwing at us. Not fear, but fear of what would happen. There, I suddenly got rid of... For me, it brought - I look at a lot of things differently. Even from the social life. I met wonderful people there, it helped me a lot. I'm not a social person. That's what helped me there too, that I'm more likely to meet people and respond."
"I did everything there, in the beginning. I went to different receptions, my husband - if he had something official, I went with him, that was one thing. Then we would have some cultural events or dinners at our place, that was me shopping, cooking for maybe twenty people." - "There wasn't any help? Or a cook?" - "No, no, we didn't have anything. They have that now, but back then we had nothing. The wives of those employees at the embassy helped me cut vegetables or wash dishes. And there was another problem – when we invited local people, who ate kashrut and who didn’t? And then they wanted svíčková (tenderloin), but that’s not kashrut. These were the kinds of things we had to figure out – how many people needed kashrut food and how many wanted Czech or our European food. My husband never drove a car, and I wasn’t allowed to drive there."
"That was something completely different. Probably because I had such a foundation of technical thinking from my dad, so when I was deputy director I was put in charge of technical things: the building department, the security department, the economic department, the curators. That kind of technical background. I enjoyed it terribly." - "That must have been something completely new." - "Something completely new, and by building it from scratch, you were there. Amazing, great people were there. Really, it was a very nice period. Even the floods in [2002]. I was in Prague, and now the water was pouring down on the collections. The director was over there in North Moravia, on the phone. We were clearing out Klaus's synagogue. Then the director came back, took me home at midnight, told me not to walk, because nothing was running anymore. It was horrible, but an amazing experience - how people worked and everything. To this day, we still get together with those people from the museum and go to events."
Helena Pojarová, born Weichetová, was born on 22 June 1946 in Prague into a family with a tradition of teaching and the strong moral principles of the Masaryk First Republic. Her mother studied law, but because she preferred to raise her two children rather than enter the workforce, the family lived very modestly on the salary of her father, a chemist. Her parents refused to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), so Helena did not become a pioneer and joined the Czechoslovak Youth Union (ČSM) before graduation so that she could continue her studies. She was greatly influenced by her maternal grandmother, a deeply religious and strong personality who shaped her world view from childhood. After graduating from high school, Helena studied chemistry and physics at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague, but she never intended to become a teacher. She joined the Research Institute of Plant Production and after her maternity leave she moved to the Office for Inventions and Discoveries. Her husband, PhDr. Miloš Pojar, a historian, writer and diplomat, worked first at the Academia publishing house, but after the normalisation checks only as a technical editor. He moved in dissent, wrote extensively without the possibility of publication, and after the regime change he was offered the position of ambassador to Israel. Helena and her children went with him for four years. She helped him restore the practical functioning of the embassy: these were important formative years for her. Upon her return, she became the assistant, and later deputy director, of the Jewish Museum in Prague, and contributed significantly to the building of the museum’s new concept.
In the garden in Strašnice. Third from left: mother Emanuela, fourth witness, fifth maternal grandmother Emanuela Škrábková, sixth paternal grandmother Božena Weichetová, circa 1949
In the garden in Strašnice. Third from left: mother Emanuela, fourth witness, fifth maternal grandmother Emanuela Škrábková, sixth paternal grandmother Božena Weichetová, circa 1949
