Alois Brod

This is my grandfather, Alois Brod, the father of my father.

Unfortunately I didn't know him, he died before I was born, sometime in the first half of the 1920s.

And most of what I do know about him, I know from Mrs. Anna Kopska, who already served with him, then cooked for my parents, and after the war lived with me and raised my daughter.

Grandpa was likely born in the first half of the 19th century. He lived in a village a little ways away from Caslav, it's called Vrdy-Bucice, and there he had a mixed-goods store.

It was definitely a large store, perhaps the largest in the vicinity. You could buy everything there. Textiles, shoes, tools, sweets, groceries... Behind the store there were also stables and also a lot of fields belonged to it.

My grandfather had a lot of employees. In fact, everything I know about him, I know from one of them, from Mrs. Anna Kopská, who later worked as a cook for my parents as well, and then after the war lived with me and took care of my daughter.

My grandfather probably wasn't very religiously inclined, allegedly he used to have ham brought to him in the washroom, so that my grandmother wouldn't see it, for she was more Orthodox.

My grandfather had siblings, for sure I know that he had a brother, Josef, whose descendants are still alive today, some here, some in America.

Mrs. Kopska also used to tell me that my grandfather used to sit in front of the house, and on Sunday, when children would be on their way to church, he would give out sweets to them.

And he used to say, look, what a grimy child that is, if it washed itself, how beautiful it would be.