Ruth Goetzova and family
This picture was taken in Prague in 1930. It seems to have been taken at some studio. From the left there is Robert, my stepfather's brother, beside him is Aunt Erna, then her husband Oskar Kolb and then my stepfather Ota Las. I am the girl beside the two sitting women, on the right side is my mother and on the left side is Robert's wife.
My mother was named Hilda, born Krauskopfova, in the year 1900 in Prague. She was a housewife. I don't know what sort of education she had. About a year after we returned to Prague from Germany, she married for a second time, a Czech Jew named Ota Las, who came from Serlovice near Tabor. He was born in 1898. They were married at the Old Town Hall in Prague, and didn't have a Jewish wedding. My stepfather and I got along very well; he treated me wonderfully. In 1930 my mother had a daughter, Vera, whom she loved very much.
Although my mother and I lived in the same building, we didn't see much of each other. I was with my grandfather, and my mother had started a new family. Our relationship was very unusual, and was far from a warm and cozy mother-daughter relationship. Later I always took care of her when it was necessary, because in the end she was my mother, but I don't remember her ever giving me a hug or kiss.
My stepfather had a brother, Robert, who had a Jewish wife. Both died in the Holocaust.
My mother had a sister, Erna, and a brother, Rudolf. Erna was two years younger, was childless but married, her husband was named Oskar Kolb. Oskar was a Jew and worked as the director of a distillery. Aunt Erna was a housewife. Each Sunday my grandfather and I would pick up my Uncle Oskar and go to the cemetery to visit my grandmother, and on the way back we would have a mid-morning snack at my aunt's and would then continue on home for dinner. I remember that Aunt Erna had a dog. I don't think that Erna and Oskar were particularly religious, but for sure they at least went to synagogue for the high holidays. Oskar died before the transports; Erna was transported to Terezin in the fall of 1942, and that same year further on, to the concentration camp Maly Trostinec, where she was shot.