Asaf Auerbach with his mother at a sandpit

Here I'm with my mother, Marketa Auerbachova, at a sandpit in Prague in the 1930s. In the background of the photo you can even see an ice cream vendor's wagon. The photograph could have been taken at the Zlute Lazne [Yellow Spa] bathing resort in Podoli, where we used to go with our parents to swim in the Vltava River. There were also the Modre Lazne [Blue Spa], but we, I don't know why, used to only go to the Zlute. There were these wooden pools there, cages, bars submerged in the water, it was made so that the water could stream in, and it had a bottom so that you couldn't sink down. This rectangular mesh. People of course also went out into the open Vltava River, but I only went into those pools. I learned to swim here, still before the war. We also still used to go there after the war, but when they built dams, the Vltava was no longer fit for bathing, from that time on the water was too cold.