I took life as it came
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Helena Fialová, nee. Talandová, was born on May 18, 1934 in Želechovice near Uničov as the second of four children. Her father had a joinery workshop in the house where they lived, specializing mainly in the manufacture of windows. Mum was a housewife with the children. Her childhood was accompanied by the Second World War. The village where they lived was first occupied by the Germans in 1938, then, thanks to the efforts of the mayor and several local citizens, it was exempted from the occupation, but they lived surrounded by German villages. They experienced the liberation of Želechovice in May 1945 and the arrival of the Soviets, who took up residence there. Her father’s workshop, where he still employed helpers for some time after the war, was incorporated into the Dřevokov enterprise after 1948. The next blow came soon after. The husband of her mother’s sister, František Zábojník, who ran a butcher’s shop in Uničov, was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment in 1949, along with others, for possession of a hidden radio. He returned after eight years. He served his sentence in Jáchymov, where he mined uranium. Helena graduated from a vocational school for women’s professions in Olomouc, after which, in the early 1950s, she began teaching in a kindergarten. She then devoted her whole life to this profession. In 1955 she married Ladislav Fiala, a joiner, with whom she raised her daughters Helena (1955) and Jitka (1957). In 1989 Helena Fialová retired, eventually moving to a home for the elderly in Šternberk, where this interview was recorded in 2025.
