Eva Freyova with her grandparents Hermina Freyova and Julius Frey

In this photo I'm with Grandma Hermina (Freyova) and my grandfather (Julius Frey) in front of a gazebo in the garden - it stood on the right from the house. Later the Communists tore this gazebo down. My mother's father, Rudolf Finger, had it built for my mother and her sister Marie in the year 1934. Both of them lived there with their families. We moved there in 1934 from Pilsen. The house is very close to the center of town, but back then it was a quiet, out of the way place. But then the Communists sliced off a part of that garden, up to the corner of the house, and built a four-lane highway there. Back then some builder, a protégé of Antonin Kapka, who was a prominent Communist functionary, instead of a planned bypass around Litomysl, pushed through a highway through town. With which he greatly damaged the town. The same thing happened in Usti nad Orlici as well, and in many other places. Grandma Hermina lived with my grandfather on the main square in Litomysl, and often came to visit us. And maybe even more often we visited them. We were very close together. My grandmother on my father's side was born on 12th September 1875 in Litomysl. My grandma was very kind, but was a bit of a lackluster type of person. I've got the impression that I get it from her. And as opposed to my grandpa, she didn't know how to tell stories and fairy-tales. I don't know what sort of education she had, and as far as work goes, she was probably a housewife. Later, though, she ran Uncle Karel's, her unmarried brother's, textile store in Litomysl for him. You see, Uncle Karel was a bohemian, a singer, and devoted himself more to singing than to business. So my father's mother was basically a businesswoman, though a bad businesswoman. She gave things to people on credit and never wanted them to pay it off. She'd say, 'You'll give it to me when you have it.' Well, I think that for the most part they never did give it to her. My grandpa was immensely understanding, and gave me what he could, that is in a spiritual sense. Instead of fairy-tales he would tell me Bible stories, in a very interesting fashion. I was capable of sitting and listening to him for hours on end. He was born on 1st April 1866 in Dolni Kounice, near Brno. He graduated from high school, but where exactly I don't know. His mother tongue was Czech together with German, because he came from Brno. In and around Brno, German was spoken a lot. He spoke only Czech with me, but you could tell that his foundations were German. But he wasn't a German, though he had a German name. This is because Josef II gave Jews various rights, and in exchange they had to take various German names. And I've heard that the name Frey or Frei perhaps meant free, that he wasn't of some, let's say, subservient standing.