Olga Korbelova with her granddaughters

Olga Korbelova with her granddaughters

This photo was taken in Strakonice in 1933. This is Grandma (Olga) Korbelova, my sister (Milena Deimlova) and I. I worshipped her, terribly. She was very kind and self-sacrificing... Even before I started going to school, she used to take me with her to the mountains and would put me in a ski school there; she herself didn't ski, but just kept an eye on me. When I was five, I got the whooping cough, so she spent six weeks with me in the mountains so that I'd get rid of it. And so that the baby wouldn't catch it, my little sister. The things that Grandma and I experienced in the mountains... Once, in the summer, we were all in the mountains and I was again sharing a room with my grandmother. It was just after lunch, we were lying on the bed and suddenly ball lightning flew through the room. We were lucky, nothing happened to us, we just had this horrifying experience because of it. Every winter I was in the mountains with my grandma for one week. It was this sort of spring break of mine, which otherwise didn't exist. I remember that once I returned to school beautifully tanned. The principal of course knew what was up with me, but he couldn't help himself to not ask, because he always asked everyone who'd been away from school for some time. Well, and I told him that I'd been sick. To which he replied that I must have had a bed by the window, since I was so beautifully tanned. Unfortunately, my grandma didn't like to have her picture taken, so in this picture you can't see her very well either. Grandma, like basically my whole family, died during the war.
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