In this photo you can see me and my younger daughter Jenny. The picture was taken in Horni Slavkov, probably in 1959.
I met my first wife at work. She's named Marie Pavlinkova, and was born in 1935. She studied to be a cook, but worked in the Jachymov mines as an operator, she looked for radioactive traces. Our wedding was in 1952. We had two daughters: Vratislava in 1953, and Jenny, who was named after my grandmother, in 1958. Because I traveled a lot, to installations all over the republic and later even abroad, we began to have problems, which in 1969 resulted in a divorce. Maria and I used to live in Horni Slavkov in a three-room apartment. For some time after the divorce we lived under one roof.
After the divorce in the beginning the girls could be together as much as they wanted, because we both lived in Slavkov, but then Marie remarried and moved away to be with her husband in Chomutov, and then they didn't see each other any more, only when Jenny came to visit us. From a young age the two girls had a bad relationship, they always fought and to this day I don't know why. One time it wasn't the way one would like, the next time the other, and right away things were bad. Even in adulthood they always argued, they could get along for only twenty minutes and then got into each other's hair.
Harry Fink with his daughter Jenny
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