Helen Wilkes

* 1936

  • „I wanted to be a diplomat and I passed exams that only two people in my university, me and a man passed. It was very difficult, seven hours of examination writing, complex things, I can tell you, where copper mines are in Canada. Crazy things I needed to know. But i wanted to represent Canada, I dreamed of travelling, but having purpouse, and say: hey this is Canada and this is new world. And they said: ‚Dear, don ´t feel bad, but Canada won ´t train twenty one year girl that marry and waste education.‘ So I end up as a Teacher.“

  • "It was very difficult they were no farmers, so uncle – we lived with uncle and aunt, he was from Horšovský Týn and knew a little bit about farming. His family were cattle dealers in Pilsner area, he knew about farming, he was able to fix things, but my parents knew nothing. The life was terribly difficult, we had no money at all. My parets first day bought a cow and the cow second day died, all the Canadians laugt, that stupid people ho didn ´t know the sick cow from a healthy cow. My mother was terrified of cows, she allways wore scarf around her head. She didn ´t want to touch them i remebrer her with this scarf. We lived in a primitive conditions, we had no indoor toilet, we had no running water, we had even no drinking water, we had a well, that was undrinkable. We had to bring every drop of water from elsewhere, we had no heat other than burning wood, we had no electricity in the house. Conditions were so primitive."

  • "He was in Terezín and than he was in Auschwitz, he survived. He thinks that it was i part because he worked for a company called Parik and his egineereing skills were needed the company hired him again after war, they gave him work. And he thinks that the nazis found his skills even in Terezín and Auschwitz, he was able to organize things, he was able to figure things out. They made use of him, ..they gave him more food so he was able to survive. His wife was a medical doctor Vera, the same thing, she used whenever skills she had even in this terrible conditions, to help other people. And again, I thought she died in Auschwitz, but my student was doing research it was another camp near she contracted on of these horible diseases she died trying to help people. It explains Arnolds devastation."

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    Plzeň, 31.08.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 55:28
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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The abysmal differences in society have always bred hatred, we should learn from this

Helen Waldstein in 1940
Helen Waldstein in 1940
photo: Archive of the witness

Helen Waldstein Wilkes was born on 3 August 1936 in Horní Stropnice (German: Strobnitz) in South Bohemia. She grew up in the loving arms of her parents on a farm in the Canadian countryside. She never really fit in with her peers because she was different from them in many ways: When she entered first grade, she didn’t know a word of English. As an only child, she also had no other children around her and no adult relatives besides her parents and aunt and uncle. It wasn’t until she was in her sixties that she discovered her father’s old suitcase, which contained letters from relatives. So she embarked on a quest to discover their fates, which she compiled in her book The Letters From The Lost. She discovered that almost all of her extended family, including grandparents on both sides, uncles, aunts, cousins, had perished in the Holocaust. Helen’s parents managed to flee the Sudetenland via České Budějovice, Prague and Antwerp to Canada. There, as immigrants, they undertook to work on a farm for five years. Feeling alienated, the witness turned to books, studied literature at McMaster University in Canada, then earned an M.A. from Middlebury College in the U.S., while spending a year on a scholarship at the Sorbonne in Paris. She received her PhD in French Renaissance literature from Wayne State University in Detroit. She has worked at various levels of American and Canadian education and was still professionally active at the time of the interview.