This picture was taken on a winter weekend in 1928 in Kamzik, near Bratislava. In the back on the right, is my future first husband Jan Kramek. The other two were boys from Bratislava, both were Jewish. The photographer who took our picture was likewise, a boy from Bratislava, whose name unfortunately is a blur to me. Both of the boys emigrated to England. There they joined up with soldiers of the Czechoslovakian Battalion. That's how they fought under the command of Great Britain in World War II. Both fought till the end of the war, and when they came home, communism broke out here. The said, they hadn't fought for that, and so they emigrated to America. Immigration was easier for soldiers of the English army. Unfortunately, none of them are still living.
We went up to Zerge mountain to ski with my best friends at the time. We walked up, and walked back, there wasn't a bus route to there. We carried our skis on our shoulders for kilometers up the hill. We went skiing every week, generally on Sundays, for the whole time there was snow. We had things to do during the week, but on Sunday morning, by nine o'clock we were on our way up, and at two or three in the afternoon, we returned home. Skiing was pretty expensive fun, but I had skis. Here in Bratislava, I never skied, it wasn't usual for the time. After the creation of the First Czechoslovak Republic, the Czechs came and discovered that you could ski in the Lower Carpathians. A year later I got ski equipment from my grandmother.
