Helena Bílá

Hele­na Bílá was born and grew up with her four sis­ters in a Roma set­tle­ment about fifty metres out­side the vil­lage of Malé Kapušany. There were six sin­gle-room cot­tages in the set­tle­ment; all the Roma there were relat­ed, and the only source of water was a stream. Helena’s moth­er Ilona,[1] orig­i­nal­ly from the vil­lage of Vagaš, used to paste the inside of ovens for peas­ants in exchange for pay­ment in kind, or she sold horse­rad­ish at the mar­kets in Prešov; her father Karoľ[2] made a liv­ing as a brick­lay­er, and sold unfired bricks, and her grand­fa­ther trad­ed cattle.

[1] Sur­name not provided.

[2] Sur­name not provided.

Hele­na Bílá described the vil­lage before the war, when a lot of Jews lived there. Her father used to help out in the fam­i­ly of the local butch­er. One day how­ev­er they were all tak­en away in wag­ons by unspec­i­fied persons.

Dur­ing the war there were mem­bers of the Hlin­ka Guard in Malé Kapušany. Hele­na Bílá par­tic­u­lar­ly remem­bers the Maňkoš fam­i­ly. They were afraid of one of the Maňkošes[1] who had tried to rape Hele­na Bílá’s aunt. The Roma did not dare to enter the vil­lage; the only per­son from the set­tle­ment who went there was Hele­na Bílá’s moth­er because she had a pale com­plex­ion and did not look like a Roma.

One night, Hele­na Bílá’s father was tak­en to the labour camp Petič togeth­er with his broth­ers Šľepi and Lajoš, his cousin Franc and his broth­er-in-law Joži.[2] Her father spent four months there and on his return he described the ter­ri­ble con­di­tions, such as the fact that he and his broth­ers had to beat each oth­er with shov­els for the amuse­ment of the Hlin­ka Guard.

Hele­na Bílá, with her moth­er and sis­ters, took shel­ter with their grand­par­ents in the vil­lage of Vagaš,[3] where her father lat­er joined them. The Roma from Vagaš sup­port­ed the par­ti­sans, and twelve joined them, includ­ing her uncle Ďula Gabčo, who lost three fin­gers and had to be treat­ed in hos­pi­tal in Košice. After he returned to his fam­i­ly, Gabčo took them into the Bukov­ina for­est not far from Vagaš and helped them to hide until the arrival of the Russ­ian troops and the end of the war.

[1] First name not provided.

[2] Sur­names not provided.

[3] Today Šar­išská Poruba.

After the war the fam­i­ly moved to Prague. Hele­na Bílá had spent some days at school in Slo­va­kia, but did not return after the vil­lage boys beat her up. She did not even start attend­ing school after their arrival in the Czech lands and after­wards was only ever able to sign her name.

Hele­na Bílá met her hus­band Imrich at Roz­toky near Prague in 1954. They soon obtained a flat in the vil­lage of Sedlec and Hele­na gave birth to a son Hon­za and a daugh­ter Ilona before Imrich had to start his mil­i­tary ser­vice in 1956. He served for two years and two months with the mil­i­tary gar­ri­son admin­is­tra­tion in the Šuma­va area.

After mil­i­tary ser­vice they got mar­ried in a spon­ta­neous­ly arranged dou­ble wed­ding with her husband’s sis­ter and her hus­band Josef Žolták. They brought up six chil­dren; one son, Imrich, died trag­i­cal­ly at the age of twen­ty-five after being injured at work in the ura­ni­um mines.

They lived for approx­i­mate­ly twen­ty years in the vil­lage of Dětři­chov, in a cot­tage with a small­hold­ing for rais­ing ani­mals. Then they moved to Brandýs for ten years to give the chil­dren bet­ter con­di­tions as they grew up. They worked in a fac­to­ry, and when the com­pa­ny was tak­en over by a French firm they fol­lowed Hele­na Bílá’s sis­ter to Prague-Vysočany, and after anoth­er six­teen or sev­en­teen years they moved to north Bohemia.

Hele­na Bílá worked as a press oper­a­tor and a cook. She looked back nos­tal­gi­cal­ly to the Com­mu­nist peri­od, as a time when it was pos­si­ble to earn enough mon­ey to cov­er one’s liv­ing expenses.