Anna Synkova with her great-grandson

This is Anna Synkova, nee Mandova, my third mother. She's sitting there with her great-grandson. That's already a long time after the war, I'd say the 1960s. Anna Synkova married my father just before the prohibition of mixed marriages, so she put herself at great risk. What's more, her relatives tried to talk her out of it, understandably from fear for her future existence. She of course wasn't Jewish, but a Catholic, utterly tolerant. Overall, she was excellent, kind. According to me, a true angel. She'd loved my father for years; he used to care for her teeth, as a patient. My father was a very - so in this I'm not like him - handsome man, who didn't at all look Jewish. She was born on 9th March 1897 in Kolc, near Slany. She worked as a seamstress. She sewed normally, like people did at home, as well as for the Rosenbaum company. That was this large company where she apprenticed, and she was the first fabric cutter there. So she was a lady that knew what she was doing. My father didn't survive the war, he died in 1944 in Auschwitz. My stepmother was also arrested, but she returned after the war. But she also didn't know why they actually arrested them. It's quite likely that they were denounced by someone. She passed through the Ravensbrück and Barth concentration camps. She didn't return until somewhat later, not until the end of June 1945, and was seriously ill.