Olga Brodova in the shop of her father-in-law

Olga Brodova in the shop of her father-in-law

This is my mother and part of the interior of my grandfather's store in Vrdy-Bucice in Caslav region; the photo shows what it looked like inside sometime during the 1920s.

My grandfather had a mixed-goods store. For sure it was a very large store, maybe the largest in the region. A person could find almost everything here.

From candies, through various fabrics, shoes, up to maybe tools. You can after all see that on the photo, for example just that selection of fabrics must have been huge...

My grandfather had many employees, you can see one store employee in the photo.

Though my mother also sometimes helped out in the store, she never had steady employment, she was a housewife. She didn't work until she was in Terezin, where she was forced to by circumstances.

The store in Vrdy-Bucice prospered up until my grandfather's death.

After that my father still managed it for some time, but in the second half of the 1920s he sold it and moved to Prague with his wife, and worked as a grain wholesaler.

He also brought with him to Prague Mrs. Anna Kopska, who had already worked for my grandfather and then in my father's household worked as a cook.

When sometime after the war I went to Vrdy-Bucice to have a look, the store still stood there, and you could even still see the sign 'Alois Brod'. Now it's of course redone.

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