House No. 428/6 in Litomysl before the war

House No. 428/6 in Litomysl before the war

This photograph was taken sometime in the 1930s by our house in Litomysl. My mother's father, Rudolf Finger, had it built for my mother and her sister Marie in the year 1934. Both of them lived there with their families. We moved there in 1934 from Pilsen. The house is very close to the center of town, but back then it was a quiet, out of the way place. But then the Communists sliced off a part of that garden, up to the corner of the house, and built a four-lane highway there. Back then some builder, a protégé of Antonin Kapka, who was a prominent Communist functionary, instead of a planned bypass around Litomysl, pushed through a highway through town. With which he greatly damaged the town. The same thing happened in Usti nad Orlici as well, and in many other places. Our family and my mother's sister's family lived together in one house, I think that it was a nice house. Because as soon as the Germans arrived and occupied Litomysl, we had to move in with my father's parents, and upstairs in that house the Germans set up an NSDAP office and downstairs a 'Kindergarten,' or nursery school. After February 1948 this chairman of the Communist Party in Litomysl came upon an original idea. That we're going to have to move out and that he's going to put the Communist Party secretariat on the first floor, and a nursery school on the ground floor. Or an absolute analogy, right? Back then we tried as we might to defend ourselves. One of my friends worked at the district government office - back then Litomysl was still a district - and kept an eye open for us. As soon as they were notified that we'd have to move out, she told us about it even before we got the notification. My mother went to see a different friend, a lawyer, and she immediately wrote up an appeal for us. We appealed for so long, that we eventually appealed all the way up to Zapotocky. And with him we were finally successful, so we were able to stay there. Well, but because there were two three-room apartments with a front hall, quite large rooms, they then wanted to move us out, based on the fact that it was too big for us. For in those days it was permitted to own only three rooms, but I don't remember their exact area. Back then it was established by some sort of decree. My mother resolved it by selling half of the house, the upper half, to a friend of hers. At that time they were looking for an apartment, so they bought it and immediately moved in. The lady is two years younger than our mother, and is still alive. At least I hope that I can say that, for sure she was still alive last week. So now this old lady lives upstairs there with her daughter, and in our apartment no one permanently.
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