Marie Ginzova

This is a picture of my mother, Marie Ginzova. It was taken in the 1920s, probably in Hradec Kralove where she used to work before she got married. My mother was born in Cibuz, near Hradec Kralove, in 1898. She grew up in the country and then in Hradec Kralove, where she went to a commerce-oriented high school and then worked as a secretary at an insurance company. She also took German and French at school. My mother had many interests, all sorts of intellectual ones, but she also used to go to gymnastics. My grandparents on my mother's side aren't of Jewish origin. Grandpa was a country teacher. He died young, he was a little over 40, and left my grandmother alone with five children and a small teacher's pension. They were very badly off, literally poor, and so all the children had to work. My mother didn't get married until she was 29, even though she was very pretty, but she had to help support the family, so that the younger siblings could study. I don't know if my mother actually converted, but when she married my father in 1927, she completely gave herself body and soul over to Judaism. Her family wasn't against it - Grandpa wasn't alive any more at that time - in those days before Hitler, when a Czech girl married a Jew, it meant that she was lucky, because a Jew didn't drink, usually made good money and was a good father and husband, which my father really did fulfill.fill. My father's life's hobby was membership in the Esperanto movement, and during an international congress of this movement that took place in Prague he met my mother, who was also a passionate Esperantist. My mother would tell that when she saw my father, she thought that he was a Spaniard, because he was a little on the darker side. Because everyone spoke in Esperanto, you couldn't tell who was from where. But then, when they got to know each other more and spoke a bit, it came out that they were both Czechs. Their marriage took place in Prague at the city hall.