Anna Kopska with her son, her daughter-in-law and Hanus Brod

Anna Kopska with her son, her daughter-in-law and Hanus Brod

This is another photograph that was taken by a street photographer. In it are Anna Kopska, her son Pepek with his wife, and my brother Hanus Brod.

They had gone somewhere for a walk, probably in Prague in Stromovka park. I know for sure that the photo was taken during the war, in 1940.

I met Pepek, Anci Kopska's son, when he was already a grown man that had returned from the war.

One day someone rang, I was by chance at home at the time, Mrs. Kopska went to open the door, and suddenly I hear how she's greeting some Pepek, her son, as I later found out.

Anci had Pepek still during the time of Austria-Hungary, maybe at the age of 18. Anci was married, but only very shortly, her husband soon died of tuberculosis. Her entire marriage is a mystery, she never talked about it.

Where Pepek was brought up when he was a small boy, I also don't know. As I said, I only met him when he was already a grown man.

Pepek got married, and built a villa in Zleby u Caslavy with his wife, who was also from the Caslava region.

Mrs. Kopska probably helped him out with it a lot financially, because she wasn't too happy that Pepek divorced a few years later, left the house to his wife and moved to Prague, alone.

So this way Mrs Kopska actually lost all of her savings. I remember the house in Zleby very well, we used to go there during summer vacations. That's where we were when my father died, and there we found out about his death.

During the war we had some things with them, hidden in a wall, which after the war we of course got back.

A few years ago we were driving through the area, and so I said that we'll stop there.

We rang the doorbell at the villa, and when some man came out, I said to him that a certain Mrs. Kopska used to live there. And he says, yes, yes, Marie, come on out. And out came Marie, Pepek's former wife.

I had known her as a young and beautiful woman, now in front of me there's an old granny. And conversely, she had last seen me as a boy and now I was there with my granddaughter.

Marie's and Pepek's daughter, with whom I used to play, had also grown up and had children of her own... Well, life's progress is inexorable.

When Pepek got divorced, he came to Prague, and worked in some factory. During the war he lived with his mother in our apartment on Masna Street and helped her take care of it.

Then he remarried, moved to the quarter of Holesovice, and had a son with his second wife. He died in the mid-1960s, a few years after his mother.

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