Anna Kopska and Toman Brod

This is a photograph of me and Mrs. Kopska after the war, taken in the sanatorium in Podoli, Prague.

After the war, Mrs. Kopska was the only person that represented for me a certain connection with pre-war life. As far as my family is concerned, I was the only one to survive the war, my mother and brother both died.

From my other relatives, my uncle Jindrich Brod and aunt Berta from Pardubice died in Auschwitz, uncle Jiri Petrovsky with his wife Anna and son Ivos most likely died in Lodz, uncle Jiri's daughter, Vera, who he had from his first marriage with that Italian woman, she wasn't deported, and died after the war of leukemia.

Further, my mother's sister Stefa Pickova died in Auschwitz in 1944, her brother Jindrich was also in Auschwitz, but he didn't die until after its liberation in March of 1945.

It's a miracle that his wife, Aunt Ruzena, and their two children also survived the war. My mother's brother Karel wasn't deported anywhere. So Anna Kopska was the only person close to me that I had left after the war.

As soon as I returned to Prague after the war, I went to where I had lived before the war. I only hoped that the building wouldn't be destroyed, because I had heard that there had been fighting in Prague.

Luckily the building was still standing, our neighbor, Mrs. Bondy, took me in to her apartment, because Mrs. Kopska wasn't at home. Then

Mrs. Kopska arrived as well, I went over there and was telling her my whole tale, and mainly I ate. That saved my life. My one and only joy was eating, I ate a whole marble cake in one sitting. And also to sleep in a clean bed.

I was home for only a short while, I went to see a doctor who sent me to a sanatorium for treatment. Later he told me that he hadn't expected at all that I would survive, that's how serious my condition was.

Up until 1948 I was removed from daily life, I spent that time being treated in various sanatoria. In Prague-Podoli, then in Ples, then in the Tatras. Mrs. Kopska would come to visit me and bring me marble cakes.