Helena Glancová

* 1938

  • “You had to wear the star, and I was awfully excited that when I turned six, I would also be allowed to wear it, like the other children did. Mum had a handbag, she unstitched it and wore the handbag like this, so it wouldn’t be visible, because the spot was a lighter colour. Jews were not allowed to sit in the tram, they had to stand on the platform. And one man, a complete stranger, said: ‘What’re you sitting for, off to the platform with you!’ Well, Czechs can be like that sometimes, too.”

  • “The reek of mouldy cubes of pea soup, I remember that as a smell, one I’ll never forget. Whenever I smell that kind of mustiness somewhere, I immediately think of Terezín. Rotten potatoes and stale cubes of pea soup, that is the smell of Terezín to me.”

  • “I took my ten-year-old son to Olšany [Cemetary - trans.] for All Souls Day, and we all knew which grave was the one that referred to Palach, although the name there was Marie Jedličková. Most people knew where it was, and so there were always dozens of candles burning there. It was a paradox in that there was Marie Jedličková there. I stopped there for a bit with my ten-year-old Tomáš, and he did what children do, that he lit the candles that had gone out from the other ones that were still burning. Perhaps he didn’t even really know where we were standing. A spook [undercover agent - trans.] came up and said: ‘Come here, come here...’ And he started dragging him off somewhere. I said: ‘What do you want with him?’ - ‘Is he yours?’ I said yes, that he was my son. ‘Show me your ID.’ There was a population census going on at the time. I told him I had just been filling out the census forms and had left my ID card on the table. ‘Well, then come with me.’ They took us to the closest station, wrote down our statement, and yet all that had happened was that he had been lighting candles that had gone out, more from a kind of childish... so they would burn nicely, seeing that they still had some wick left. I thought, goodness gracious, they won’t expel him from primary school for that, will they?”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    ZŠ Dr. Františka Ladislava Riegra, Semily, 10.11.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 01:29:48
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The experience of previous generations sets an example, often a forbidding example

Helena after return from the concentration camp
Helena after return from the concentration camp
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Helena Glancová was born on 9 February 1938 into a mixed Jewish family in Prague. In 1943 she and her mother were interned in Terezín. They both survived their stay in the ghetto, but most of their relatives died in concentration camps. In May 1945 she and her mother returned to Prague. The witness attended primary and then secondary school. She graduated in theatre directing at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). In her last year she undertook an internship in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). After graduating she found a place at the East Bohemian Theatre in Pradubice. From 1964 she assisted Otomar Krejča at the National Theatre in Prague. She helped found Theatre Beyond the Gate in Prague in 1965. The Communist regime dissolved the theatre in 1972. Helena Glancová then worked at Lyra Pragensis, which was under Supraphon, until the Velvet Revolution.