Bohumil Justitz

Bohumil Justitz

This is a picture of my father, Bohumil Justitz, taken in Prague in the 1930s

There was constant fun with our father. He was always making and playing jokes. I found out a lot about all the things he used to do from my parents' best friends. They were chemists and left Prague in 1939, and via Poland and the Ukraine ended up in Siberia. In 1946 they returned home and were glad to find us here. When I left I was eleven, so I was glad that they told me something more about my parents. They for example told me that when they had visits over, they didn't have milk at home, because they didn't have children and liked to drink black coffee. Whereas my father liked a bit of milk. So he'd take a small bottle along with him, put it in his breast pocket and then take the cork out, like he was squirting the milk. So those were my father's little jokes; that was my father.

Our father first worked as a traveling salesman. He walked around with a briefcase and sold things, perhaps still when I was born. Then he had his own business, with electrodes. First in Strasnice on Prubezna Street, then in Liben. Today it's up there in Holesovicky, as you drive down, on the right there are these nice little houses that are still there. My father was the only owner, and the company was tiny, at most twelve or fifteen employees. I used to go there very often and gladly, because they liked me there, too. When we lived in Vinohrady, it wasn't far to Prubezna, I think I even used to walk there. Back then there wasn't nearly as much traffic as today. After we moved to Holesovice I could no longer walk there alone anymore, it was too far, and so my mother probably used to take me there.

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