Arnost Brod
This is a photograph of my father taken in Frantiskove Lazne [Franzensbad], where he was in 1933 for a curative stay.
My father used to visit Frantiskove Lazne regularly for treatment of his urological problems.
My father worked as a grain wholesaler. He used to go to the country, where he bought grain from farmers, and in Prague sold it on the commodities exchange.
My father was a somewhat conservative type, who was of course glad that he had sons, because at his age he had no longer hoped that he would have any offspring, so he was very proud, took care of us, gave us precise orders as to what we could do and what we couldn't.
He checked what time we were going to sleep, checked how we were bathing ourselves. He was a person that, as long as he had the time, took very good care of his family.
Unfortunately he had very little time, he was basically already an old person. When he died at the age of 60, everyone said that he had already been an old man, that his time had come.
Today that's nonsense, 60-year-old people are fundamentally very active, but as I say, already when he was 50 he wanted to retire, and didn't do so only because we were born.
Well, so I have him in my memory as a person who of course tried to somehow play with us, but I think that at his age he didn't understand children much any more.
In the fall of 1938 our father was in the hospital for about a month. Already before that he had been ill. His condition got worse though, and he had to be operated on, I guess it was because of his prostate or something like that.
However he didn't cooperate with the doctors very much, and I think that this is why he died. He was afraid of life, afraid of Hitler.
He died on September 28th, coincidentally on September 30th the Munich Agreement was signed. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery.
