Harry Fink with his mother and Scharpner grandparents

This picture was probably taken in 1934 in Hermanov Mestec. The first on the right is my grandfather Leopold Scharpner. The second from the right is my grandmother Jenny Scharpnerova. My mother, Marketa Finkova, is the first on the left. The boy is me. I used to stay with my maternal grandparents during summer holidays, because they lived in Hermanov Mestec and that's only a hundred kilometers from Prague. I knew my grandfather, Leopold Scharpner, as already a very old man. Grandpa was a shoemaker. My grandma was of course a housewife. They probably lived well, because they had a multi-story house built on the main square. They lived on the first floor, where they had four rooms, and the rooms downstairs were rented out. Plus in the back there was a general store, so they must have lived well. My grandfather went to the synagogue, that I know, but he was by no means Orthodox. He'd go to the synagogue and then to the pub. During Sabbath he probably didn't go to the pub, I don't know. They definitely didn't observe Sabbath, maybe only as this little trifle, but not the real Sabbath as it's observed. I absolutely for sure know that they didn't keep kosher, neither did my parents nor my mother's parents. They ate pork at home, as well as meat mixed with dairy products. I remember one thing that happened back then. There was a sewer running through town and some rats ran into it. Of course I flew in after them, into that stinky sewer. When I returned home, I got bawled out for it. In my defense I said, 'But there were kittens drowning in there!' A child from Prague can't know this... Otherwise I got into the same kinds of trouble as all children. Once we went stealing pears, another time plums, that's how we amused ourselves, like it normally is in small towns and villages.