This picture was taken in the garden of my paternal grandparents' house in Celkovice in the 1930s. It shows my grandfather, Jakub Bohm, my brother Rudolf Bohm and me.
My grandfather was born in Batelov, Moravia, in 1861. His father had a drapery factory and died when my grandfather was a kid. When my grandfather grew up he managed the drapery factory with his brother, but they went bankrupt. Later he was a coachman and had a buggy pulled by a horse. He liked to play cards and enjoy life.
When my grandfather got married to my grandmother he moved from Moravia to Celkovice where she lived. Celkovice was a suburb of Tabor at that time. He opened a drapery shop in Tabor. He employed one shop assistant and a few tailors and a foreman in the workshop, which was next to the shop. They sewed clothes for man, mainly uniforms for the garrison in Tabor.
My grandparents lived about 15 minutes walk from our place. It was a nice house with a garden, situated next to the river. They didn't have electricity so they used oil lamps, and the toilet was in the yard. My grandfather used to sleep in our house, except for the weekends, because it turned out to be too far for him to go back to Celkovice every day. He stayed in the shop until evening and then he arrived and read the Prager Tagblatt. [This was a German-language daily newspaper.] My grandmother had her own friends but they weren't Jewish because there were no Jewish people in Celkovice. They met and talked but in general they didn't have very much spare time.
My grandfather wasn't religious at all, he only went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. He came from an ordinary Czech-speaking family, but he was big fan of Austria-Hungary.
We did not spend our entire childhood at my grandparents' but we went there once a week. My brother Rudolf's schoolmate lived in Celkovice and he had siblings and we played together. Our favourite place was the wooden arbour in the garden. There were also a lot of fruit trees, mainly apple trees. Rudolf and I liked it there.
My grandparents were deported to Terezin concentration camp with us in November 1942 and died there. My grandfather died in 1942 when he was about 80 years old. My grandmother died a month later because she was old but, I think, also because she was used to him and suffered from his loss.
