Ruth Goetzova's family in Karlovy Vary

This picture was taken in the 1920s in Karlovy Vary, where my family used to go. From the left you can see Mr. Pick who was a friend of Oskar Kolb, Aunt Erna's husband, I don't recognize the second person from the left, then there is Aunt Erna with Oskar and Grandpa Jindrich Krauskopf.

My grandfather on my mother's side was named Jindrich Krauskopf and was born in the year 1872 in Otice, near Klatovy. I don't know what level of education he achieved, but I know for certain that he didn't go to university. He lived with my grandmother in Prague, in the beginning on Vodickova Street. In those days they began from zero, they sewed caps and jackets and other things for newborns and gradually worked their way up, until my grandfather opened a cap and hat factory in Vysehrad in Prague. The company had an English name, ERKA CAP. ERKA was a trademark that came from the initials of grandfather's son Rudolf Krauskopf. The factory sewed on a large scale; we had many sales representatives that traveled throughout the whole country. The factory itself had around 200 employees. I remember that we even had the honor to sew caps for President Masaryk.

Erna was two years younger, was childless but married, her husband was named Oskar Kolb. Oskar was a Jew and worked as the director of a distillery. Aunt Erna was a housewife. Each Sunday my grandfather and I would pick up my Uncle Oskar and go to the cemetery to visit my grandmother, and on the way back we would have a mid-morning snack at my aunt's and would then continue on home for dinner. I remember that Aunt Erna had a dog. I don't think that Erna and Oskar were particularly religious, but for sure they at least went to synagogue for the high holidays. Oskar died before the transports; Erna was transported to Terezin in the fall of 1942, and that same year further on, to the concentration camp Maly Trostinec, where she was shot.