Helena Katz was born in 1916 into a German-speaking Jewish family in Trutnov in Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic).

After she completed study at the Realgymnasium of Trutnov in 1935, she and her mother moved to Prague; her father had died in the previous year.

In about 1936 she met Paul Hermann, a Czech from a Jewish family, and in 1938, after she had finished her dance training and her university exams, they were married.

[4] When the war ended, she returned to Prague, where she learnt of her husband's death; her mother, who had been deported early in 1942,[2] had been murdered at Sobibór extermination camp.

[4] Helen began to correspond with Harry Lewis, a Czech with British nationality whom she had known at school and with whom she had had a brief romance before she met Hermann.