"My mother left Czechoslovakia when she was fifty-five years old, which means she was of retirement age. And by then Czechoslovakia was rather glad to be rid of pensioners. My mother was tried in 1971 because a former district attorney, I think he was from Rumburk, who was a friend of a State Secret Police officer, who had a cottage not far from us, liked our cottage in Kytlice and he wanted to get it. So they seized the cottage that my father had bought with his rehabilitation money, and because he was deprived of his citizenship, they couldn't sue him for loss of property, so they just said they didn't know where he was and they assigned the whole thing to my mother so they could seize it. Because of this, they sentenced her to a year in jail and forfeiture of all assets for following her husband. There were interrogations that they did in connection with that trial."
"I passed the defence of my thesis in October and the state exams followed. Everyone picked a sealed envelope. In the sealed envelope there were the questions but the first thing that came out was the invitation to vetting. This was the seventies. They tried to be very polite to me. They recommended me to do economics for a living, because I probably wouldn't apply myself in history, and so I did. But even in economics I didn't apply myself for a long time, only after fifteen years. But otherwise they didn't give me any bad recommendations. They didn't give me any ban. They just recommended that I do economics for a living. Finding a job, regardless of the fact that I was a Goldstücker, was a problem for all my classmates who graduated at that time."
"I went to Brighton at the time, where I was on an intensive language course and living in an English family. The lady was probably a housewife but her daughter was a hairdresser, her son was a mechanic and they were earning extra money by accommodating students. One day the lady woke me up very early in the morning informing me that Czechoslovakia was occupied. There was another Czech in the course with me, so I immediately got in touch with him and we went to London to see what we could find out. Of course, we didn't find out anything, but I didn't return to that school in Brighton again. I still went back there to get my things and I went to the house where I was staying. These were the people I worked for as an au pair, but they were friends of my parents. So I had a key as well and they were on holiday. I went there thinking that the next day I would go to the embassy - and immediately the phone calls started: different neighbours and people I had never heard of asking me if I needed anything, if it was really me, who was there, if I had enough information and if I knew anything about my parents. And then I experienced a great demonstration against the occupation of Czechoslovakia. It was the biggest demonstration I ever saw in England."
"I had another horrible experience in Leopoldov. That was in 1954. We were allowed to visit once every six months, or maybe once every five months. We visited once in the winter and then in June 1954. It was hot and they kept us waiting outside for about six hours. They treated also the families of the political prisoners horribly. I was really sick and I had a fever. We weren't even allowed to stand in the shade. We had to stand about a metre away from the fort. My mother went and asked the guards if I could wait in the shade as I was only a child and I was sick. I wasn't allowed to do that either, so I had to stand in the bright sun. Then the visit took place, and when we drove back, my mother found that I had scarlet fever."
"My only idea of prison was Daliborka - and that's how I imagined where my father was. And unfortunately my first visit to the prison, which was in Leopoldov, did not dispel my idea. On our first visit, we arrived in a village and people looked at us strangely because they all knew we were visiting the prison. We went through the village and there was a bridge. When you got to a certain point you couldn't see anything in front of you but the fortress. A fortress from the time of Leopold II, which didn't changed with time. Only one thing changed. There were barbed wires charged with electricity attached to the top."
"Restaurants and Canteens in Prague 1 called a meeting of the ROH (Revolutionary Trade Union Movement), which was obligatory because it was during working hours. We all met in a large restaurant on Wenceslas Square and all of us signed attendance lists. They explained about two items that concerned some employee benefits, and then they said that the main item on the agenda would be to condemn Josef Smrkovský. And I decided that there was no way that I could be a part of that. Because I knew his family, I had met him, and also because I respected him. I got up, and because I was pregnant, I said I couldn't be there anymore because there were too many people and I was sick. They said, 'Of course you're pregnant,' and I said, 'And please cross me off the attendance list.' The lady in charge said, 'No, you are present, so that's fine.' I said, 'No, I'm leaving, that's not fair. Anyway, you have to cross me off the attendance list.' It was clear that nobody would sign the resolution against Smrkovský that it would be voted on, that the majority would be in favour and that all those who had signed the attendance list would be signed under the resolution. But I managed to get crossed off the list, so my signature is not there."
Helena Vávrová was born on 13 June 1947 in London, where her father worked as an ambassadorial counsellor at the Czechoslovak Embassy. Her parents, Eduard and Marta Goldstücker, emigrated to Great Britain via Poland in 1939 to escape the Nazi threat. Goldstücker was already a well-known leftist intellectual in the interwar period and joined the Communist Party in 1936. In 1949 he was appointed the first Czechoslovak ambassador to Israel. In 1951 the whole family returned to Prague and in December 1951 Eduard Goldstücker was arrested for political reasons. In May 1953 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a mock trial of Foreign Ministry officials. Helena, her mother and older sister Anna lived with their grandmother in Jičín. After Goldstücker’s release from prison in December 1955, the whole family soon moved to Prague. After graduating from secondary school, Helena studied history and economics at the Charles University in Prague. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops, she refused to emigrate. Her parents settled in Great Britain. She graduated from university in 1970 in a climate of political vetting and firing of politically inconvenient teachers. She was employed part-time as administrative assistant at the Viola Poetic Wine Bar, but was denied the job of cashier for political reasons. She was not allowed to work in a job corresponding to her education in the following years (she worked as a cashier in Restaurants and Canteens (RaJ) or weaved baskets in the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD). In the early 1970s she married the actor Miloš Vávra and together they maintained contacts with the dissent. She was allowed to visit her parents in 1983 after almost fifteen years, after numerous difficulties and official obstructions. It was not until after 1989 that she got her dream job as a teacher. She gave birth to three daughters.
